The Housekeeper

by Suellen Dainty

  “I’ll get it,” I said, uncomfortable with the idea of Emma waiting on me.

  “No, you keep Siggy company. I need to go to the loo anyway.” She stood and walked off in a slow, careful way. It was fully dark now. Under my feet, Siggy snored quietly amid the comforting creaks of the house as it settled itself in the night.

  It was some time—I couldn’t say how long—before Emma reappeared, clutching another open bottle and seeming, miraculously, almost sober. “Sorry to take such a while,” she said. “I had to make a quick call. By the way, I like your new bag. Couldn’t help noticing it in the study.”

  It was one of Jude’s castoffs, a caramel-colored plaited leather pouch. “Thanks,” I said. “A friend gave it to me. It was surplus to her fashion requirements.”

  Emma went to pour more wine. I leaned back in my chair. The slight movement made me giddy. “I think I should switch to water,” I said. “I’ve got to get the bus home.”

  “But you could stay here,” said Emma. “You know you could.”

  I was thinking how pleasant that might be when the front door opened and slammed shut. We both jumped. There was a draft of cool air and Lily was beside us with one of her stern friends. I could never get their names straight. She picked up one of the empty bottles and scrutinized the half-full one by Emma’s glass. “At home drinkers—you’re the sort of people newspapers write about these days. You’ve got your very own medical danger group. Hospitals are filling up with people like you.” She glared at Emma and then at me, in that self-righteous way of teenagers who dig away at their parents’ frailties. “Don’t stay up too late.”

  The mood was broken and I jumped up, suddenly more sober. “I should get going. Thanks for everything, Emma.” She reached over and took my hand again.

  “It was great,” she replied. “And remember what I said. I mean it.”

  It was only when I was on the bus that I realized our usual evening chorus had been reversed. I had thanked her, not the other way around. It was significant in some way that I was too tired to ponder, so I gave up and examined my fellow passengers instead.

  Often I saw interesting people on the bus or the Tube and imagined their secrets. I still thought about the blond-haired girl I’d seen one evening, trying to calm her drunken father, begging him to stop shouting at the bus driver, then helping him along the aisle because he was barely able to stand. What happened to them? There was a beautiful boy I used to see on the bus on the way to the restaurant. He had black hair and milky-white skin and always wore just a singlet and jeans, no matter how cold it was. One day a pair of ballet shoes and a leotard fell out of his backpack, and he blushed as he picked them up and dusted them off. I still wonder sometimes if he made it as a soloist.

  I walked home, stopping at the late night shop. Imran stood in the aisle, examining a bunch of brown bananas. “Hey,” I said, clutching a carton of milk and a bag of apples. “How are you?”

  “Very well, thank you. I think my sister might come to visit us very soon.” He smiled. “That would be good, for Faisal and me.”

  “Nothing better than family.” I grinned back from a wine-enhanced glow. “Nothing at all.”

  Later, dry-mouthed, with the shadow of a hangover headache lying in wait for the next morning, I regretted yet again the invitation I’d presented him with weeks before. I wasn’t used to having people in my flat, not even Jude. I’d make some excuse the next time I saw Faisal. He’d probably be relieved.

  24

  Words are lies most of the time. Actions tell the truth always.

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

  The weekend dragged. I did the laundry and some food shopping and cleaned the flat. After so much time, I still missed Gran and my fortnightly journeys to and from Somerset. I’d drive past Stonehenge, up the steep hill, and along towards the pig farm before the roundabout, slowing so I could see the families of animals wandering in and out of their different-sized huts scattered throughout the fields. Gangs of piglets rushed about as sows snuffled around them. I’d imagine gatherings at the end of the day, all held in tribal pig harmony. Then, the best part of the long journey, coming over the crest of the broad hill and dipping down. Always there in that exact place, it seemed that the horizon tilted its golden fields towards me and welcomed me back.

  The last time I saw Gran, she was in the nursing home outside Shaftesbury. I pulled into the car park, expecting to see her perched on the window seat just inside the hall. But she was in her room, lying down with her eyes closed. Her hand rested on her forehead, the slack flesh of her arm gathered at the elbow. An angry bruise bloomed on her temple, visible between strands of hair matted with blood. Her eyes opened slowly, as if from a deep sleep.

  “What happened?” The words came out in a rush. “Why didn’t anyone call me?”

  “For heaven’s sake, don’t fuss, girl,” she whispered. “Although I wouldn’t mind some water, now that you’re here.” I helped her sit up and poured a glass of water. She drank and lay back, sickly yellow pouches of skin under her eyes. I wiped the dribble from her mouth and straightened her pillow. Under the sheets, her legs made a harsh noise like sandpaper. I drew up a chair and waited.

  After about ten minutes, her hand fluttered against mine. “Marianne,” she whispered, fixing on a point at the end of the bed. There was a prickle of apprehension as if the room were held by a halt in time. “Thank you for coming, bless you, darling girl. Don’t go just yet, Anne will be here, any minute now she’ll be here.”

  Her fingernails dug into my wrist.

  “Gran, it’s not Marianne, it’s me, it’s Anne.” I heard my voice, shrill and bouncing around the room. “It’s Anne. I’m here already. There’s no one else in the room.”

  Her head lolled to one side and she closed her eyes again. “So silly. I could have sworn she was here.” She sighed. “They’ve given me so many pills. I feel half-dead.”

  Gran must have missed my mother so much. For all of my early life, she hadn’t known where she lived. She only knew where her daughter had died. My online trawling had made me see for the first time the stigma that existed thirty years ago about mentally ill people, how cuts in funding left so many wandering homeless when care was handed over to the community. Gran had no one to talk to about her worries, no one to help her be a mother or a grandmother. I’d always thought it was petty snobbery that kept her quiet. For the first time, I saw that her silence about my mother’s schizophrenia was intended to spare me the shame she had lived with for so long, about flawed genes and toxic inheritances and my own illegitimacy.

  When I got to work on Monday, Rob was doing his usual mooching thing about the kitchen.

  “Hello,” I said.

  “Hi.” He glanced at his watch. “Can’t believe the time I’ve wasted. I’m so late.”

  “I’m sure you’ll catch up with yourself,” I said. It was hard to work out, this thing with Rob. I didn’t know it was possible to feel so many things at once. I missed the way we were, our morning talks, the way he made me feel safe. There was the crashing sense of abandonment and betrayal after I saw him and Theo together, and fear as well that what I knew could change so much. I wanted to go back to how it was, before the party, before I went upstairs to get my coat.

  There was also that other thing I didn’t want to think about and that hadn’t gone away completely: my attraction to him, the power of that irrational brief moment when we stood in the door of the study and I wanted him so badly. And overlaying all this was the inescapable fact that I couldn’t bear to leave the family I loved.

  “Emma says the book is pretty much finished.”

  He stared right into my face, as if he had been a million miles away and had just registered me for the first time. “Yep, it’s good. Everything worked out in the end.” He picked up his bag. “Nearly forgot. Could I ask a favor? I need my signature witnessed for some BBC paperwork that has to be filed today, and Emma left before I could ask her.
Would you mind?”

  “Of course not,” I said. He fossicked in his bag and produced a pen and folded a piece of paper. I wanted to tell him that there was no need to fold the page. I wasn’t interested in how much money he earned or the details of his contract. Instead, I scrawled my signature and the date in the two blank boxes at the bottom of the page.

  “Thanks,” he said and off he went.

  In between my usual routine, I fretted about seeing Emma later. It was a myth that secrets drew people closer together. I saw it all the time in the restaurant, the after-service letdown accompanied by a drink or two, the things that tumbled out from people you didn’t really know, apart from standing next to them during a twelve-hour shift.

  It was different with Jude, because she really was my friend and we knew each other’s secrets. But the others couldn’t help themselves. The things they told you! Men sleeping with their stepmothers. Women deranged by lust for boys young enough to be their sons. And always the next day, they stared off into the middle distance as they greeted you awkwardly, remembering what they’d said the night before and hoping that you’d forgotten. I wondered how Emma and I would act towards each other, if she’d be embarrassed or pretend that nothing of any consequence had been said.

  She came into the kitchen an hour before dinner (sumac and chili chicken with roasted peppers and sweet potatoes, and steamed green beans). Instead of taking up her position on the counter, she walked over to the sink and put her arms around me. “I enjoyed our drinks party for two so much,” she said. Her hair brushed against my neck. “Let’s do it again sometime soon. That is, if you don’t mind.”

  Of course I didn’t mind. I was grateful. Emma had captured in an instant my awkwardness after our evening together. And now she seemed to be telling me, subtly, that she understood. She held up a wineglass and offered it to me. I smiled and shook my head. She poured herself a modest half glass and began foraging through a bottom drawer.

  “Have you seen that list of school parents?” she asked. “Apparently there’s a bus strike tomorrow, and here we are, both Rob and me non-drivers. Fiona tried all afternoon, and it seems there’s not a spare car or driver to be had in the whole of London. God, I wish I’d made more effort at those ghastly parents’ evenings. I can’t think of a single person I can call and cadge a lift for Jake and Lily.” She stood very still, as if the lack of motion would somehow conjure a name and a telephone number, with a car attached in the middle.

  I was about to suggest that she drop Jake and Lily at school in her usual morning taxi and then go on to her office. It was a simple enough solution. But Emma would see that as time wasted in her busy day.

  “Why don’t I take Jake and Lily to school? I’ll need to drive here anyway because of the strike. No problem to come a bit earlier.”

  “Oh, you absolute angel,” sighed Emma. “Thank you so much. Saving my life yet again.”

  I arrived at Wycombe Lodge early the next morning, walking in to the muffled and intermittent sounds of their breakfast. Emma was buried in her computer. Rob stared into the middle distance while Jake and Lily gulped down cereal in silence. They might have been four strangers in a roadside café.

  “OK,” I said. “Ready when you are.” Five minutes later, we set off on our circuitous route through the back roads, carefully plotted by me the night before to avoid traffic snarls. The school was in a large stucco house on the other side of Richmond Park. Probably after one recession too many, no one knew what to do with such a place. It was too big for a private house, and too out of the way for a company headquarters, but perfect for a small, independent school, commutable from the stockbroker suburbs farther out and a good section of the inner west.

  I watched Lily and Jake walk through the gates, noting how easily Lily fell into step with a trio of girls while Jake slid alone through the stream of students as if he was expecting someone to attack him. Everyone except him looked the same; members of some affluent tribe, with their tousled hair and their confident slouches, leads trailing from their earbuds down into their pockets. Somewhere in the crowd was the daughter of a famous actor, the sons of a former supermodel, and twins belonging to a lesbian couple, one of whom was a political broadcaster and the other a photographer whose work hung in the National Portrait Gallery. The common denominator was a bank balance hefty enough to afford the fees and to keep up with the extracurricular activities: tennis, riding, skiing holidays. I’d seen the lists in Lily’s room.

  Jake disappeared into the crowd. Groups of students straggled behind him. I was about to drive away when I saw his history book on the floor beside me. He’d been revising in the car for a test. I thought he might need it, so I got out and walked through the gates to find him. The square of tarmac was empty except for a lone teacher. She had one of those earnest scrubbed faces with pale eyes and invisible lashes.

  “Can I help you?” she asked.

  “Yes please,” I said. “I wanted to get this book to Jake Helmsley. He left it in the car.”

  “Thank you.” Her voice was high and girlish. “I’ll make sure he gets it.”

  “That’s kind. I know he was concerned about the test.”

  “Actually,” she said. “Now that you’re here, if you’ve a minute . . .” There was a moment’s hesitation, from both of us. I should have introduced myself, said who I was and why I had driven Jake and Lily to school. But I didn’t.

  She looked young enough to be a student herself, although I wouldn’t have mistaken her for one. She was too dowdy in her serviceable green sweater and tartan skirt, her hair pushed back in an old-fashioned headband. “I’m Margaret Stiles, Jake’s form mistress. We haven’t actually met. I know how busy you must be—of course I know about your work—but I’m wondering did you have a moment to read my email? We were most concerned.”

  It wasn’t too late to back out and say I was the housekeeper. Clearly she never browsed photographs in the society pages, because there was no way in which I resembled Emma. But I liked the look of respect in her eye. I told myself this was something I could deal with.

  Margaret Stiles coughed, then cleared her throat. “As you know, this is a liberal school, and we try to encourage all points of view, from every one of our students. But . . .” She faltered. “But recently Jake wrote an essay for his History of Art class that we found, well, rather alarming. His teacher gave it to me, and I’m afraid I felt it necessary to hand it over to the headmaster. It caused quite a stir. I mean, the views he expressed in it.”

  “I’m sorry, but I’m not aware . . .” Even then, I could have said who I was. I still could have made it sound plausible. But I thought of Emma slumped on the table with her glass of white wine and her quick dismissal of my concerns about Jake. I’d have a better understanding of whatever this woman was about to tell me. Emma might not even need to know.

  The teacher continued. “Perhaps my email went astray. They often do, don’t they, you know, go into the wrong box. But I did leave a message on your mobile, asking if we could talk to you and your husband.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t know anything about this.” Actually I did. Emma often recharged her mobile in the kitchen, so I knew she rarely returned calls that weren’t to do with her work, or listened to her messages. The teacher looked over my shoulder. A raw blush was spreading up her neck and she chewed at her lip.

  “There was an essay set on Caravaggio. They’d been studying his pictures, and Jake wrote that all work by homosexual artists wasn’t worthy of public display, or discussion, because homosexuality was . . . the exact word I think that he used was an abomination. I mean, as a school, as an educational community, we can’t condone those kind of views.”

  “I read the essay.” She had gained confidence while she was talking. The blush had receded into a series of pink blotches and she spoke more strongly. “He was quite emphatic about it, dredging up versions of biblical quotes to support his argument. I mean, I’m sure you’re aware that we are a gay-frien
dly educational community.

  “We have openly gay students, gay teachers, and gay parents. And Jake would not see his own intolerance on this matter. He would not retract anything that he’d written. He said it was his right to speak freely, and that homosexuality was wrong. And the thing was, all of us here thought that Jake . . .”

  Her voice trailed off. She was about to say her tolerant, gay-friendly, educational community had thought that Jake, with his golden hair and his long eyelashes, his distaste for sport, was gay. Doubtless they were anticipating his coming out. It was that sort of school. Part of me admired Jake’s courage and wanted to applaud him for standing up for his right to an opinion, but that opinion came from intolerance and hate. Was this all that church’s doing?

  “I’ll talk to Jake tonight, and call tomorrow to make an appointment.” I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  “We’d very much appreciate it if Mr. Helmsley could come to the school as well,” said the teacher.

  “Yes,” I said. “We’ll come as soon as possible.” By now I was embedded into my playacting, making a show of giving her a firm handshake as I said goodbye. I drove back to Wycombe Lodge, trying to justify my behavior. I could pass on some version of the conversation to Emma and ask her to contact the teacher. I could say the teacher was confused. And really, I was helping Emma by talking about Jake. She wouldn’t have gone into the school with the history book. She would never have noticed it lying on the floor.

  Even so, when I picked up Jake and Lily, I waited for them outside the school gates in the safety of my car. “Everything OK?” I asked Jake after they squeezed in.

  His face was suffused purple with embarrassment or anger. It was hard to tell. “It would be, if people stopped asking stupid questions.”

  Lily opened the window. A motorbike roared past, a flash of black leather and chrome. “You can’t keep a lid on things forever,” she said.