The Housekeeper

by Suellen Dainty

  There was only a scattering of guests left. More than anything, I wanted to get out of the house before Rob and Theo came downstairs. But I needed to check on Emma first, to make sure she hadn’t slipped away from her agent and gone upstairs again. I found her safely ensconced in the sitting room. The agent was leaning towards her, trying to stroke her hair and caress her face.

  The front door was open and a breeze filtered through. A couple wandered off and then Jake and Lily were beside me. “We’re a bit late,” said Lily. “We missed the bus and had to get a taxi.” She ran her eye over the empty glasses and dirty plates littered everywhere. “Wow, a good night, even by their standards. See, I told you they wouldn’t notice a thing.”

  “You were right,” I said, sick at what might have happened, them slipping into the house and going upstairs past their parents’ bedroom. “There’s loads of food. You should go and help yourselves.”

  I looked through the back windows onto the garden, wanting a moment not possessed by what I had seen. In the night reflection, I saw shadows under my eyes and lines across my forehead. I moved my head from side to side, the way I liked to do when I had the house to myself. Perhaps it was the darkness of the night, but nothing changed in my focus. It was the same series of shadows wherever I looked.

  “Well well.” I turned when I couldn’t ignore Rob’s voice any longer. I needn’t have worried about the expression on my face, that I might have given something away. He gave that funny circus master wave with his arms, the same wave he’d given during my interview for the housekeeper’s job, right here in this room, when I’d fallen for him, for them, the whole nine yards.

  “Well,” he repeated, with another circular sweep. Coin-sized rings of sweat bloomed in the armpits of his shirt. “What do you think? Did things go well?” How could he look so normal, like he usually did in a room full of people, full of confidence? His hair was neat, his face not even flushed. He looked so pleased with himself. Emma appeared beside him, running her hands through her hair with that careless gesture I tried so hard to copy. “How would you rate everything?” she asked. “You know you’re our litmus test, that we rely on you to tell us how things are.”

  I made sure to look straight into her bloodshot eyes, behind the smuts of mascara and the eye shadow creasing at the corners. She had tried so hard to make the evening a success. “It’s terrific,” I said. “It’s been a great party. Really.”

  The woman with the cat’s-eye glasses tapped Rob on the shoulder. “A good evening,” she said. A sliver of salmon, shining pink, had fallen on her black top. “A night to be talked about, along with many others. Well done.”

  Emma slid her arm around Rob’s waist. “Thanks,” she said. “We’re so pleased that you could make it.” They were seamless at that moment, smiling goodbye.

  “I wouldn’t have missed it,” said the woman. “London’s power couple does it again!”

  For a second, I almost believed that nothing had happened, that what I’d seen was a terrible miasma. But there was a cold shiver at the back of my neck and a dry papery taste in my mouth. Everything was horribly and needlessly broken. I began picking up plates and glasses, but Rob took my arm.

  “You’ve done enough, Anne, far more than necessary. Thank you. Go home now. The girls will clear up—it will all be back to normal when you return.”

  I protested, but not that much. Rob pressed a £50 note into my hand. “It’s late,” he said. “Call for a taxi, they never take long to come.” My first reaction was to think that this was a bribe or the beginning of one. But Rob didn’t know I’d seen them. He’d only heard Emma and me talking.

  I said goodbye and walked out into the night. The drizzle had mixed with mist to dull the streetlights into a series of pinpricks. The pavements were black and slick with the drip of sodden trees. I rang for a taxi and gave the pickup point as the street corner nearest the bus stop, then scurried from streetlight to streetlight, my footsteps echoing around me. There was a moment, just before I reached the corner, when I thought I heard a shuffle and breathing and I ran into the middle of the street. At least I would have some warning of attack then. But it was nothing. There was nobody.

  All the way home in the taxi, I kept hearing the gasp, the wet slipping sound. I saw Theo’s hands running through Rob’s shock of hair, the dim outline of their bodies bending towards each other. I smelled their sweat and felt the currents of air in the room, like electricity.

  “Everything OK, love?” The taxi driver kept glancing at me in his rear vision mirror. “You look a bit done in.”

  “It’s been a long day,” I said and closed my eyes.

  If I had hoped that my flat would provide calm, I was wrong. Its neatness mocked me, the vacuumed stripes on the carpet visible in the dim light of the lamp, the dishcloth folded into a perfect square in the kitchen. I opted for the Lady Macbeth response to the evening and ran a bath. I lay submerged in hot water, inhaling my neighbor’s cigar smoke, exhausted by the effort of not thinking.

  Everything banged around me in so many discordant emotions. Anger at Rob and Theo. Sadness that I could never again see Theo as a friend, that his professed adoration of Emma had been a complete lie. Fear that Emma would somehow find out. My desire to protect her and the children. The memory of them in the bedroom played in my mind. I could sniff the sex, almost viscous.

  The lie of it all—why did Rob and Theo need to carry on with this secret affair? It wasn’t like people had to keep being bisexual or gay secret anymore. People were comfortable with being gay, transgender, sexually fluid, or whatever. Caitlyn Jenner, Ellen DeGeneres, Elton John—the list of famous people went on and on. Gay men and women got married, had children. So why did they keep up this pretense of heterosexuality? Why not be out and proud like everyone else?

  One a.m. Sleep was impossible. Swaddled in a bathrobe, whiskey slopping in my glass, I paced my tiny room, not knowing what to do. Despite her success in the world outside the house, Emma wasn’t cool and urbane when she was at home. Even with the house, her money, it was still Rob she cleaved to for assurance. There was that tentative way about her, her anxiety to please and her incessant thank-yous. I wanted to protect her, but that seemed impossible.

  Two a.m. I decided there was no need to tell Emma. She needn’t know a thing. We could continue our presupper chats in the kitchen about her day. And I could keep up with my morning conversations with Rob. I could even manage to talk recipes with Theo after dinner. Five seconds later, there was every need to tell Emma. I couldn’t keep such a thing to myself, seeing them together every evening and having to greet Theo when he came to dinner. Ten seconds later, I would do neither of these. I would say nothing and leave Wycombe Lodge quickly, with some trumped-up explanation. I would discover what happened at Kinghurst Place on my own, without Rob’s help. My thoughts spun in a whirring circle.

  Three a.m. I slumped on the sofa, spilling whiskey on my bathrobe. The noisy hiss of car tires on the wet roads came through the open windows, then the faraway beat of music. Maybe I didn’t have to tell Emma after all. Maybe I didn’t have to leave Wycombe Lodge. All this might be a shock reaction, like when you saw a car accident or a street fight and you couldn’t help yourself. You needed to talk about it. You turned to the nearest stranger, you grabbed their arm, and you said, “Did you see that? Wasn’t that dreadful! What will happen now? What can I do?” And then you went home. You didn’t actually do anything at all. I didn’t want our lives to change; me, Emma, Rob, Jake, and Lily. This house had given me a place in which calm had begun to grow. Rob had given me an inkling of my past, with the possibility of much more to come. I did not want to be working in another restaurant kitchen, getting home after midnight, not knowing anything further about my mother and me, why she’d left me or who my father might have been.

  Outside, a weak light spread over the horizon. I left the half-full glass of whiskey on the coffee table and went to bed, for once not bothering to plump cushions and wash up. I fell a
sleep and dreamed tense, inescapable dreams, a volley of screams and thumps, and woke gasping, not knowing where I was until the footsteps of the couple upstairs reminded me. I lay still for a minute, the hair at the back of my neck twisted and damp. It didn’t take long to make my decision.

  I would return to Wycombe Lodge. Do nothing, I told myself. Ignore it. Pretend it didn’t happen. I was good at that. For the best part of thirty years, I ignored my own early life. I could do it again. I wanted to protect Emma and Jake and Lily. I wanted to continue being the housekeeper. I would keep writing in my notebook, keep trying to find out about my mother, and everything could stay the same.

  20

  People say at Kinghurst Place the lunatics have taken over the asylum. Absolutely, I reply. Who better to run an asylum than those who need it most?

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

  The prism through which I saw everything changed after the night of the party. The house was empty when I arrived on Monday, and I didn’t see Rob until the next week. Something about changed schedules and extra programs, said Emma. He had to be at the studio by 8 a.m. But the next Monday, he was mooching about the dining table in his usual way when I walked in, ruddy-cheeked, like he’d just returned from a long health-inducing run. I managed to find a part of his face that was not quite his eyes and not quite his chin, and smiled hello. It was surprisingly easy to close off the image of him and Theo, as if I could turn the prism at will from a piece of glass that refracted a chaos of violent patterns to another angle where all was white and clear.

  “Hey,” he said. “Haven’t seen you for a bit. For one of the very few times in my life, I’ve had to put the hours in.” I hadn’t thought of it before, but he didn’t work that hard. Not like Emma, always gone before I arrived and rushing back in hours after Jake and Lily got home from school. “You were such a help at the party. Thank you.”

  “A pleasure,” I said.

  “I can’t think what we did before you arrived.”

  I smiled and made coffee. But this time I didn’t hang about waiting for an invitation to join him in the study. Instead I took my mug and disappeared into the laundry, piling clothes into the dryer and washing machine, adding detergent and color brightener and fabric conditioner, everything promising jasmine breezes and fresh cotton sunlight, a metamorphosis courtesy of modern chemicals. I paired socks into shapes like fists. I folded towels and ironed pillowcases and sheets into stacks so neat they might have been encased in invisible boxes, so intent on my straight lines that I didn’t notice Siggy’s whining until he began to bark and paw at my legs.

  I clipped on his leash and set off for the river. It was high tide. Milky froth washed against the rocks under a sallow sky. I let Siggy free. He shook himself and began cantering about, looking back every few seconds to make sure I hadn’t disappeared. We walked aimlessly for a while then turned around. I liked being back by the time Jake and Lily got home from school so they didn’t come into an empty house.

  An hour later, the front door opened and slammed shut. Lily and Jake rushed in for their smash and grab from the refrigerator. My attempts at healthy snacks—things like homemade muesli bars and oat biscuits—had failed. Jake refused to budge from his peanut butter and chocolate regime, while Lily crunched her way through apples and carrots and then succumbed to a packet of crisps half an hour before dinner.

  Jake piled a plate with food and disappeared upstairs. Outside the chaos of his bedroom and the pamphlets with their warnings of damnation and calls to prayer, there was little trace of him in his own home.

  “No homework pals today?” I asked Lily.

  “They’re coming home tomorrow,” she said. “You don’t mind, do you?”

  “Of course not,” I said. “But don’t they ever want to stay on for dinner?”

  “Not really.” She chewed for a bit. “Besides, Mum and Dad prefer to have their own friends to dinner. They’re not that interested in mine.” Her matter-of-fact tone discouraged further conversation. She disappeared upstairs. I cleared away their mess and began chopping onions and tomatoes.

  Everything was easier to understand now. I watched over everything at Wycombe Lodge with a sadness, as if I were looking at photographs of a country in which I’d once been happy. I could spot the difference between the tables that were French and valuable and the ones that were Edwardian junk. Under the residual smell of dog and fading lilies, I recognized the refined, dry smell of money. When I gazed through the French windows to the garden, the autumn leaves dropping like oversized petals, I saw as well the reflection of my own round face, giving nothing away.

  Jude told me to leave. “Get out of that house,” she puffed into her mobile during her morning boot camp in the park. “Leave them to deal with their dirty secrets. Nothing to do with you if they refuse to live honestly.”

  “I will. Soon, but not just yet. Something might come up about my mother. Rob might find out something more.”

  “And pigs might fly,” she said.

  As I walked to the river each day, Siggy doing his best to trip me up, I saw how Rob and Emma didn’t notice much of what went on in their own home, although they spent most evenings there. Rob was preoccupied with his work. He was oblivious to Jake’s unexplained absences and Lily’s obsession with lists, her concern about her plumpness. It had taken a while, but I finally understood his concentrated gaze at Jake and Lily across the table. It wasn’t that look of pride or adoration that parents often bestow on their children. It was almost abstract. He was looking at them in a professional way, analyzing some aspect of their behavior or speech in psychological terms.

  I felt more protective and fond of Emma than ever now, but I’d become aware of her vagueness, the way she sometimes forgot to close the front door when she came in at night; how she loved her children, but seemed to regard them as two strangers who had somehow taken up residence when she wasn’t looking. Couriers arrived at least once a week with clothes she’d ordered online for Jake and Lily, always too small for her and too large for him, and completely unsuitable as well. What sixteen-year-old girl needed a knee-length leopard print pencil skirt? What fourteen-year-old boy wanted a navy Ralph Lauren blazer? Where did she think they would wear such clothes? To the cinema? To Starbucks?

  “I’m sorry, I’ve got it wrong again,” Emma would say dolefully each time, peering into the boxes as Lily and I carefully rewrapped the clothes in their layers of tissue paper, ready for return. “I’m such a fool.”

  “No you’re not, Mum,” Lily would reply. “And after all, it’s the thought that counts.” After that, they would hug each other in a brisk fashion and Lily would retreat upstairs wearing the jeans she had bought for herself at TK Maxx.

  I realized as well that Rob and Emma burnished their image of the successful in-demand couple whenever possible. Everything I’d thought was so casual and serendipitous—the mentions in glossy magazines, the attendances at opening nights and private viewings—was carefully planned. Emma had her own publicist as well as the efficient Fiona. I also saw that an invitation to Wycombe Lodge required more than a winning smile. Rob’s favored guests were those with influence: academics who’d written popular books, about-to-be-big-time artists and editors. And more than once I overheard Rob blatantly cadging invitations to parties and opening nights.

  Was it a week later? Or a fortnight? I don’t remember exactly. Emma foraged in the wine cooler for an open bottle and poured herself a glass. “Christine and Rebecca. I couldn’t put it off any longer. I kept hearing the rumbles of discontent. So tomorrow night, it is. At least they’re going to get here on their own steam. It’ll give Rob more hours in his day.” She waved the bottle in my direction. “Won’t you? Just once share a glass with me?” I shook my head.

  “Shall we have the same dinner as last time? It seemed to work,” Emma continued. “It’ll be just us. Plus Theo on his own. The latest girlfriend seems to have gone the way of the rest.”

  I w
as nervous about seeing Theo again, about keeping an impassive face in his presence, even though I kept telling myself that he hadn’t seen me. Still, on the bus the next morning, the thought of the evening ahead put the wind up me. Lily was of the same opinion, but for reasons of her own. “Bloody hell, them again,” she muttered as she dropped her school backpack on the kitchen floor. “Tits reunited. Jake won’t be able to help himself.”

  “They’re not that bad,” I said lamely. “And where’s Jake?”

  “Who knows? I’m not his keeper.” Lily rolled her eyes, gathered up her crop of apples, and made for her bedroom.

  I had my back to Theo when he bounced through the kitchen door three hours later, asking if he could light the candles.

  “Thank you, but no,” said Emma. “It’s my favorite part of the day.”

  There was a creeping flush along my cheeks and I was tense and dry-mouthed, as if I were the guilty one.

  “Anne,” Theo said to my back. The force of his voice, jovial, yet commanding, was strong enough to turn me around. “Good to see you! We haven’t caught up since the triumph of the party.” He kissed my cheek with an exaggerated smacking noise. “How are you?”

  On the bus that morning, I’d wondered if he would appear different in some way, more the type of man who was having an affair with a married man, whatever that looked like. But he was the same. If anything, he reminded me even more of a bouncing leprechaun. I busied myself at the oven, checking that the chicken was ready. He sidled beside me, and forced his face close to mine. “Everything smells delicious,” he said. “As usual. We’re all so lucky to have each other.” He turned to Christine and Rebecca, who had just come in. “Don’t you think so?”