The Housekeeper

by Suellen Dainty

  Rob drained his wine. One of the girls immediately handed him another glass. He looked around. “Where are Jake and Lily?”

  “I’m not sure,” I lied. “Probably upstairs doing their homework.”

  “Do you think our famous guest will turn up?” There was that tapping of his foot against the skirting board again. “What a fiasco if he didn’t show.”

  “He will,” said Emma. “Everything will be good.” She took his hand and together they moved into the sitting room.

  It was still drizzling when the first of a steady stream of people began to arrive. I stood in the hall, taking people’s umbrellas and coats and hanging them on a rail I’d found in the spare bedroom. An hour later, the house was full. Thumping drum music from some endangered Amazonian tribe pumped through the rooms on a brain-numbing loop. People hived off into groups, leaning against the hall table, slouching in both sitting rooms and the study, crowding around the table in the dining room. You could tell that most of them had been on holiday somewhere hot and sunny. The remnants of their summer tans glowed through the gray evening light.

  I’d always liked watching people, and it didn’t take that long to work out where everyone fitted in. There was a silent statement in their clothes, their stubble or lack of it, the length of their hair and the size of their earrings. The television people were thin and dressed in black. The publishing people were also thin, but a bit older and more colorfully dressed, the women waving their bronzed arms aloft. Their accents were different as well, polished, more like the academics, easiest of all to identify because they looked older and more disheveled than anyone else.

  Only Christine, striding into the hall with the late arrivals, couldn’t be categorized. Her bottom half was clad in ill-fitting jeans. But above the waist, she wore a close-fitting vest embroidered with sequins low at the front and drooping down her back. The man in front of her stared without shame until his companion pulled him into the sitting room.

  “Hello,” Christine cried out, clasping me with both arms. We might have been close friends meeting after a long separation. Her hair was pulled back in an untidy ponytail with strands falling down her neck. “Rebecca couldn’t come—some kind of summer bug.” She laughed and fiddled with her eyebrow ring. “It happens sometimes; she’s probably been kissing too many boys.”

  Emma came up behind her, bearing a glass of wine. All her carefully applied blusher and mascara, her dun-colored clothes, made her look old next to Christine’s defiantly makeup-free face and sparkling top. “Emma, darling, thank you.” They pecked at each other’s cheeks and walked away. Christine had her hand in the small of Emma’s back, as if she was the hostess and Emma the shy guest who didn’t know anyone.

  Waiters slipped between groups, offering glasses of wine and trays of miniature sausages and quail’s eggs. Over everything rose the warm smell of food, perfume, and damp clothes, cut by slices of cooler air when the front door opened. Easy laughter floated through the rooms. The absolute untouchable confidence of them as they drank their wine and wandered about. Their voices ascended in clear lines; the sound of desirable postcodes, high-achieving children in fee-paying schools, and alpine skiing holidays.

  “. . . and I told my agent I’d rather stick red-hot needles in my eyeballs than do another book signing up north. Have you any idea what it’s like to sit at a table for three hours and not have one single person show up . . .”

  “. . . frankly, if I was a university student these days, I’d sue for breach of contract. They’re lucky if they see a tutor once or twice a term. I wouldn’t bother with conventional tertiary education these days. I’d get a job and do MOOCS. Better an online lecture from an Ivy League school than some of the garbage they have to listen to these days . . .”

  “. . . we need to restructure the employment situation or it will be too late. What graduates can afford to live in London as unpaid interns unless their parents are filthy rich? Do you think there’s a telly program in that . . . ?”

  “. . . It’s already been done. Do keep up. And what exactly are MOOCS . . . ?”

  “. . . Massive Open Online Courses. It’s the future of education. I just told you that. Another drink . . . ?”

  And then. “Have you read it yet?” A woman with a savage bob and cat’s-eye glasses walked down the hall.

  “Which one? His or hers?” Her companion was older, with a salt-and-pepper beard.

  “His, of course. I’m not interested in time management tips.” Her voice was scathing.

  “I think you’ll find that quite a few people are,” the man said. “Look at the bestseller charts if you don’t believe me.” Theo emerged from the kitchen to join them. “You can’t compare the two books,” Theo said. “Emma and Rob do totally different things.” I moved to the sitting room door to hear more, but they had merged into the crowd.

  I didn’t hear Dominic Butler enter. I was in the dining room pretending to clear plates but really enjoying the play of air from the open door on the back of my neck. There was a ripple of hush, as if someone had turned the volume down on the radio or television before turning it back up again. Everyone was pretending not to notice.

  It’s what sophisticated people did when they saw someone famous. It happened all the time in the restaurant. There was never any overt sign of recognition. In fact, just the opposite. The small groups that had formed huddled closer, just a fraction, and their conversations became more animated. Nods of the head became more vigorous, and they tossed their heads that little bit higher as they laughed at each other’s witticisms. Anything to avoid acknowledging that a famous person, who they undoubtedly recognized, had just entered the room.

  Everyone here—the television producers, the publishing executives, and the academics and writers—they were just the same. They had their own clearly defined rules of social etiquette. No gawping or brandishing their phones and asking the famous person for selfies. I was pretty sure they didn’t do photo bombs either. They were far too urbane. They would think themselves above all that starstruck business. Not me. I stopped stacking the plates and slipped unnoticed into the sitting room.

  Rob and Emma were parading Butler around the room. Butler was charming beyond all call of duty. “Hello,” he said again and again. A lot of people here would have said they were immune to fame, but there was little evidence of it. Men straightened their shoulders. Women sucked in their stomachs.

  “Yes, it’s good to be here. And of course I remember you.” Butler waved away the offer of a glass of wine. “Just water please. Where was I? I’m a great advocate of therapy. It saved me and my family, who are the most important people in my life. People often poo-poo psychology, but I think they’re wrong. Trying to find out why we do what we do—well, any intelligent person should ask themselves these questions every day of their lives—and those are the kind of questions that Rob and Emma answer, in their various ways, in their various books. So here’s to them!” He raised his glass and everyone followed suit.

  I looked across to his shining brown hair springing off his high forehead, the friendly lines around his blue eyes. Everywhere Dominic Butler went in the room, the mood was lighter, the smiles brighter. Behind him, Emma and Rob linked arms, gilded by his presence before he slipped out the door half an hour later without anyone really noticing.

  There was another momentary hush before the noise level increased. “Something of a coup,” said Theo, stopping beside me. “It’s going to be a good night.” We grinned at each other, witnesses to the winning game.

  The perennial shadow in my mind, the shouting and the screaming and the wild, murderous threats, everything floated away. I was still alone. But I didn’t feel lonely. I felt part of something: Rob and Emma, Jake and Lily. I knew their foibles, just as they knew mine, and I felt that we accepted one another like a family. Family. I said the word again to myself, just to feel the relief and joy it contained.

  19

  Sex—it’s at the basis of everything and all of us a
re nothing but hypocrites as far as sex is concerned.

  —Rob Helmsley, Madhouse: The Life and Times of Rowan McLeish

  There is always a moment in any good party, when people are no longer thirsty or hungry, when everyone’s gestures become less theatrical and their laughter less shrill. They no longer look over the shoulder of the person they’re talking to, in case they miss someone or something more interesting. Lulled by food and wine, they are content.

  The heavy rain that was forecast did not arrive. After Dominic Butler left, people gathered around Rob in the sitting room while others made their way to the study or the dining room. The woman in cat’s-eye glasses cornered Theo by the hall table. “Really, we should collaborate on a paper or something.” There was a hopeful note in her voice. Theo smiled in an absentminded way. I could have told her Theo didn’t go out with women of his own age and saved her from embarrassing herself, but she wouldn’t have listened.

  Emma moved easily from one group to another, threads hanging from her dress like cobwebs. “Heavens, how clever you are,” she told the English professor who I gathered had written many unpublished novels. “I could never write even one chapter of fiction. All I do is bullet points.” The professor beamed as she moved on to compliment the next person. “Three languages!” she exclaimed to a young editor. “I’ve only ever managed to say frites and vin! That’s it. And with the worst accent imaginable.”

  I loved this hovering and eavesdropping. It didn’t matter that I didn’t know anybody. I wouldn’t have known what to say to them anyway. I was happy picking up the odd empty plate in between being an observer and smiling at Rob or Emma or Theo when I occasionally caught their eye. “Can I do anything?” I asked Sally again as she and the two girls washed glasses and plates. “Good heavens no,” she repeated. “We have our own system.” She rinsed everything in hot water, very efficiently I had to admit. “But thank you anyway.”

  All I was doing was getting in the way. I went upstairs to get my coat and umbrella. On the landing it was dim and quiet, the light from the street lamp filtered through the mist of rain on the windows. The only sound was the murmur of conversation from downstairs and an occasional gust of muffled laughter. Siggy sat on the landing, his ears pricked and his head cocked to one side. He whined when he saw me. “Don’t fret,” I told him. “They’ll soon be gone. You’ll have the house back to yourself.” He lay down and settled his head between his paws. His eyes darted from side to side.

  I reached for my things. Something was different. There was a strange new odor, sharper, stronger. It didn’t belong here. Every room in the house had its own smell. Upstairs was different from downstairs. At Wycombe Lodge, downstairs was redolent of food and wine and Siggy, of the pleasing fug of people gathering together, mingled with Emma’s lilies. Upstairs smelled only of the family: Emma’s French soap, Rob’s male tang, and, on the floor above, Jake’s mushroomy socks and T-shirts and Lily’s herbal oils. I liked that, being able to move between the public and private spaces and know the difference.

  Along the hall, there was an infinitesimal shift in the air, as if a door had just shut silently. Then, a barely audible rustle. I stood very still, certain that Emma or Rob wasn’t up here. Emma was deep in conversation with another woman in the study, and I’d seen Rob not so long ago, sitting at a crowded table outside the dining room.

  I crept along to their bedroom door, avoiding the creaky floorboard in the middle of the hall, and stopped outside, making sure I breathed quietly. There was a second rustle, then a gasp. The door was crooked and didn’t shut properly. Sometimes it slammed in storms, but most of the time there was a gap of several inches between the door and the frame. I peered through. The room was in darkness, apart from a bedside lamp.

  They were kissing at the end of the bed, caressing each other’s head and face with slow delicate movements, as if they had all the time in the world. There was a wet slipping noise. I wanted to turn and run away, but didn’t seem able to move. Lips traveled down a neck. A hand shifted, pressing closer. I stepped away and leaned against the wall, grateful to have something hard and solid behind me.

  Everything fell into a chasm. My head grew hot, like when you wake sweating from a nightmare or when you are faced with something so hideous that everything swarms and melts into a sticky mess. It was the kind of heat that hurt, that made your face flush and swell.

  From behind came the padding sound of Siggy trotting over the rugs in the hall. I knew what he wanted—quiet refuge and the comfort of a familiar bed, away from the crowds of people downstairs. Ridiculous, I know, but I scooped him up. I didn’t want to watch him nose his way through the bedroom door while I stood stunned and motionless, not knowing what to do. I didn’t want him to see Rob and Theo together. He licked my chin and I stroked his ears to quieten him.

  “Shhh,” I whispered into the musty furze of his coat. “Don’t let them know we’re here. Stay still.” The hot feeling in my head turned into cold—frozen. Under the shock, my anger flickered and rose. My mind raced on.

  The Greek sign for Eros that I’d seen in Rob’s diary—Rob wasn’t having an affair with one of his students or Christine, as I had suspected. Nor was he writing reminders to himself. He was noting his assignations with Theo in ancient Greek. I’d never have recognized the letter if I hadn’t been the scholarship girl at Stanton Hall, where they were old-fashioned and snobby enough to care about subjects like Greek and Latin.

  Below me the swell of the party was subsiding. Soon people would start hunting for their coats, looking around to say goodbye to their host and hostess. Siggy squirmed in my arms. I stroked him, but he kept wriggling and his tail began to thump against my ribs. There was only one person Siggy bothered to wag his tail for. Under the scratch of his claws against my apron, there was the clack-clack of high heels on the stairs. I was frightened that he was going to whine or bark and I let him down. He turned for the stairs, trotting faster to greet his mistress, his stumpy tail dancing from side to side, his whole body shaking in delight at the prospect that he might be patted or even picked up.

  “Oh, there you are,” I said, with more jollity than necessary, a false emphasis on every word. I stepped into the middle of the hall, pretending almost to bump into her, but at the same time barring her way.

  Emma’s eyes were glassy and there was a small wet stain on the front of her new dress. “I’m gagging for a moment on my own.” She rubbed her forehead, rocking back and forth. “Just a quick five minutes, lying horizontal.”

  Under the hall light, she looked tired and drawn. Her lipstick had rubbed off. All that was left was a narrow coral outline at the corners of her mouth. Tiny black smuts of mascara gathered under her eyes. She always looked prettier without makeup. Siggy nudged her legs. She bent down to pat him, cupping his chin with one hand while she stroked his face with the other.

  Inside my head, the cold switched back to heat. Everything would change if Emma pushed past me to the bedroom. Everything could stay the same if I persuaded her to go downstairs again. Like a camera, I registered everything about the moment: the wavering pattern of light and shadows from the lantern on the landing, the scuffed paint on the walls, the faded floral pattern of the rugs. I remembered the morning of my interview, how Rob and Emma moved together and smiled at me, how I had straightened like a sunflower at noon under their gaze. Tears began. I blinked them away. I looked straight at her. I kept my voice steady.

  “I must have missed you downstairs. I came up here looking for you. Rob needs you, something urgent. He’s in a bit of a flap. He thought you might be upstairs and asked me to go and check.”

  Emma looked puzzled. “But I haven’t seen him for a while.”

  “He was in the kitchen a minute ago. He said he needs you down there. “

  She slipped off one of her clumpy shoes and rubbed Siggy’s back with her foot. He rolled over and she began scratching his stomach. “Maybe it can wait. I’m a bit done in.”

  “I know,” I said
, forcibly rearranging my face into a smile. “Still, everyone will be gone soon. But Rob wanted you because your agent is about to leave, and he needs to talk to you, something about a possible TV series.”

  I knew this house. I’d spent five days of every week here since the beginning of the year. I knew its idiosyncratic noises, that from Jake and Lily’s bedrooms above, everything below was muffled, but somehow sound funneled and amplified from the hall into Rob and Emma’s bedroom. Rob and Theo wouldn’t realize I’d seen them, but they could hear every word.

  I’d already lied. If Emma stepped past me, she would find that out for herself. She would think I was protecting Rob and had known about Theo. She might even think that I’d colluded with them about dates and times and assignations. “I think he was talking about a television series all of your own,” I said, cajoling her. “It sounded exciting.”

  “OK.” She sighed and put on her shoe. “Let’s go.” I followed her down the stairs, giddy with relief. In the hall, her agent, a red-faced man with bushy gray eyebrows, was weaving towards the rail, in search of his coat.

  Emma swept her hair to one side and squared her shoulders. “Sorry to keep you waiting.”

  “But you never keep me waiting, my dear girl.” He fumbled with a coat hanger. A glittery scarf fell to the floor and he stepped on it. Sequins spilled everywhere. I slipped past them towards the kitchen. Behind me, I heard Emma say, “Television! That does sound exciting. Are they really talking about a series or just the occasional appearance?” Her voice was determinedly cheerful. “Television? Yes, of course,” he replied, sounding puzzled.

  In the dining room, people sprawled around the table. Empty glasses, smeared with fingerprints and lipstick marks, were everywhere. Cutlery and dirty plates had been left skewed on side tables and on the chairs. One plate was tilted on a cushion, the fabric smeared with oil and pieces of ham crusted with rice. The woman with cat’s-eye spectacles was digging out slivers of fish directly off the serving platter and tipping them into her mouth, even though there were utensils and a clean plate right by her elbow.