Oh dear, then it must be done, Miss Hare admitted, and sighed.
Mrs Jolley was all the time looking and smiling, at some person in the abstract, in the rather stony street. At one corner of her mouth she had a dimple, and her teeth were modelled perfectly.
“Excuse me,” began Miss Hare at last, “are you the person? Excuse me,” – and cleared her throat – “are you expected at Xanadu?”
Mrs Jolley suppressed what could have been a slight upsurge of wind.
“Yes,” she said, very slowly, feeling her way with her teeth. “It was some such name, I think. A lady called Miss Hare.”
The latter felt tremendously presumptuous under Mrs Jolley’s glance, and would have chosen to postpone her revelation.
But Mrs Jolley’s white teeth – certainly no whiter had ever been seen – were growing visibly impatient. Her dimple came and went in flickers. Her expression, which might have been described as motherly by some, became suspect under the weight of its suspicion.
“I am Miss Hare,” said Miss Hare.
“Oh, yes?” replied the disbelieving Mrs Jolley.
And tried to fetch her teeth to the rescue.
But the brutal wind of a cold afternoon was not prepared to allow any nonsense. It flung the mauve eye-veil into Mrs Jolley’s eyes and even bashed her black coat.
“Yes,” confirmed Miss Hare. “I am she.”
Mrs Jolley scarcely believed what she was hearing.
“I hope you will be happy,” continued the object, “at Xanadu. It is a large house. But we need only live in bits of it. Move around as we choose, for variety’s sake.”
Mrs Jolley began to accompany her mentor over the stones, in shoes which she had purchased for the journey. Black. With a sensible strap. But, even so, she thought her ankles might not stand the walk, and the fangs of the road metal were eating through her soles.
“You haven’t a car, then?” she asked.
“No,” said Miss Hare. “No cars.”
Level with the Godbolds’ shed, the blackberry canes snatched at Mrs Jolley’s coat.
“We never owned a car,” Miss Hare was saying. “Even in the days of my father. Naturally cars were only beginning. But horses. My father fancied horses; he was quite splendid when he drove his greys four-in-hand.”
Mrs Jolley could not believe any of this. Remembering the trams, she could have cried.
“In our family,” she said, “everybody has their own car,”
“Oh,” said Miss Hare. “No. No cars.”
The sound of the two women’s breathing would intermingle distressingly at times. Each wished she could have repudiated the connection.
“It is a satisfaction to a mother,” said Mrs Jolley, on twisting ankles, “to know that each one of them – three girls – is each settled comfortable.”
“Of course,” agreed Miss Hare.
She could not believe, though. Not a bit.
Then they walked down the track which the Council had begun to call an avenue, and which led to Xanadu. Arriving at the end, the employer guided her companion through the fence, and they began the less tortuous, the longer of the short cuts.
As her responsibilities loomed, Miss Hare drew ahead. Mrs Jolley followed, occasionally hearing something tear. The silence was shocking in the undergrowth.
In the circumstances, the nascent green of oaks and elms, massed to overwhelm the scrub, issued too shrill, the grace-notes of crab and plum blossom, sprinkled at intervals on black nets of twigs, too sickeningly poignant.
Mrs Jolley remarked:
“A good thing I put me lisle stockings on.”
Her mauve eye-veil was less gay.
“The burs do prick a little, but they pick off quite easily,” Miss Hare thought to offer over her shoulder.
She had grown nervous, as if, at the back of her mind, there was something dreadful she could not remember.
They went on.
“We shall arrive soon now,” she encouraged.
They went on.
“There!” her voice revealed.
Mrs Jolley did not answer, almost failed to look up.
They climbed the approach. Under the stranger’s feet the tessellated floor of the veranda sounded hollow as never before.
But the house was hollowest.
Miss Hare had opened the front door. They had gone in. They had stood for ages.
“Well,” Mrs Jolley said at last, “it is easy to see it’s a long time since you had a lady here.”
Nor did the voices of Xanadu protest. They agreed in all coldness of stone.
“A house is not the less for what you make it,” said Miss Hare.
“Nor any more,” added the darker voice of Mrs Jolley.
Neither could have offered adequate explanation of what she had just said Each saw what she saw, or rather, Miss Hare was beginning to remember what she had forgotten. The veins in her temples were writhing. It was as if some stranger with sly eyelids had touched the real door, with a finger, and there stood the interior.
“That was the drawing-room,” she said, the tense forced upon her. “And the dining-room through the folding doors.”
But forced most brutally.
They were standing in the present, in the late hours of an afternoon in spring, when the light can be merciless. The white light fell amongst the furniture, where a bandaged memory awaited diagnosis.
“I have never seen anything like it,” confessed Mrs Jolley, withdrawing as far as possible into her clothes.
Where time had not slashed, the light was finishing the job. Cabinets and little frivolous tables seemed to splinter at a blow. Even solid pieces in marquetry, and the buhl octopus, were stunned.
Catching on to the thread of their original intention, the two women strayed here and there, but always retreating. Now a shutter had begun to bang. Old birds’ nests, lying on the Aubusson, or what had become, rather, a carpet of twigs, dust, mildew and the chrysalides of insects, trapped guilty feet with soft reminders. On one side of the dining-room, where weather had torn the slates from an embrasure in the course of some historic storm, an elm had entered in. The black branches of the elm in sawed. The early leaves pierced the more passive colours of human refinement like a knife. The little rags of blue sky flickered and flapped drunkenly. In places rain had gushed, in others trickled, down the walls, and over marble, now the colour of rotten teeth.
“Or places where dogs have pissed,” Miss Hare noticed and sighed.
“I beg yours?” asked Mrs Jolley, wondering.
But her employer did not answer – her thoughts were her own, whether she cared to utter them or not – so the housekeeper saved up what she believed she had heard, to let it ripen on the shelves of her mind before she took it down for use.
At last Miss Hare cleared her throat, and that, too, sounded dusty – she was really quite exhausted. She said:
“I think I shall take you to your room now.”
As the stair wound upward, by slow convolutions, through the well of light, its loveliness tortured the throat of the owner.
“I would sit here sometimes,” she said, “and listen to the music, and watch the dancers. Oh, it was splendid down there.”
As the stair wound upward, past the closed doors, passages tunnelled off, into distance and a squeaking of mice.
“Of course, a great many of these rooms,” she said, and waved, practical again, “have not been opened for years. There was no reason why they should have been. Not after the death of my mother. She died at the beginning of the War. The Second, yes, it was the Second War. It was Father who went during the First. And Mother, I found her sitting in her chair. But this is not the time to tell family history. And on the stairs.”
“I am a mother,” said Mrs Jolley, “and am always glad to hear of anybody in like circumstances.”
Her ring chinked on the wrought iron. Despite shortness of breath, she did, and would act firmly. Her corset could not assure enough as she followed up the stairs
. She would act as befitted a mother and a lady; it was only to be hoped the two duties would not clash.
“Here,” said Miss Hare, “is the room I have prepared. I have made the bed. Although people have different ideas on the making of a bed. There,” she said.
Would the door open?
Mrs Jolley wished it would not, and that they might be left, instead, looking at each other on the landing, however unsatisfactory that solution might be.
But the door did open, easily, even, one would have said: eagerly.
“Well,” said Mrs Jolley, “we shall see.”
And smiled.
She had a blue eye that would see just so far and no farther, which was perhaps why she could recover while still professing shock. Miss Hare hoped that her housekeeper’s face was kind, but suspected that the dimple had not bewitched more than the one man.
Mrs Jolley did not know where to begin, and would stand kneading her bare arms, as if they might not have got their final shape. In that spring weather her milky arms were dapple-blue against the silk jumper – she had knitted it herself – oyster-toned but sagging now.
Mrs Jolley was a lady, as she never tired of pointing out. She would repeat the articles of her faith for anybody her instinct caught doubting. She would not touch an onion, she insisted; not for love. But was partial to a fluffy sponge, or butter sandwich, with non-parelles. A lady could never go wrong with pastel shades. Or Iceland poppies. Or chenille. She liked a good yarn, though, with another lady, at the bus stop, or over the fence. She liked a drive in a family car, to nowhere in particular, but looking out, in a nice hat, at faces on a lower level. Then the mechanism with which her superior station had fitted her, would cause her head to move ever so slightly, to convey her disbelief.
She preferred to believe, however, and so Mrs Jolley would go to the pictures. To sit at the pictures sucking a lolly – not a hard one – after dropping the paper, along with memories and intentions, under the seat, was to indulge in sheerest velvet. It was a pity, though, about the hard lollies; the smell of a hot, moist caramel almost drove her nuts. But she would sit, and the strangest situations would pass muster as life. That lean young fellow, in crow’s-feet and leather pants, might just have reached down, and put his hand – it made her lolly stick; and Ava and Lana, despite proportions and circumstances, could have been a couple of her own girls. Best of all was a picture about a mother. She knew by heart the injustices to expect, not to mention the retribution, so that, at the end, the wurlitzer rising from its well, only completed her apotheosis. When she smelled the vox humana’s rose and violet breath, and felt the little hammers striking on her womb, then she was, indeed, fulfilled, and could forget her hubby, who had died in the lounge at 10 p.m., as she was handing him his second cup of tea. Grave as that injustice was, she had survived, and, it appeared, might have experienced enough of life and dreams to parry any further blows.
Miss Hare was afraid she might be afraid of her housekeeper. She said:
“I hope you will get used to things.”
“I miss the trams,” Mrs Jolley replied.
The clang of them was in her voice, and in her eye, the melancholy plume of violet sparks.
“Oh dear,” said Miss Hare, “I cannot say I was ever attached to a tram.”
“I miss Saturday evening,” Mrs Jolley said. “Dropping in at Merle’s or Dot’s or Elma’s. Elma is the youngest – married a stoker, not that he is not a gentleman, because none of my girls would never ever have entertained the idea of anything else but a gentleman.”
“I am surprised you could bear to leave them,” said Miss Hare, almost not loud enough.
“Ah,” said Mrs Jolley, and took the mop, “that is life, if you know what I mean.”
Then she screwed the mop in the bucket, and took it out, and looked at the head.
“Or death,” she said.
Miss Hare was terrified.
“As if it was my fault,” said Mrs Jolley. “Sitting in his own chair.”
“A chair makes it seem more natural,” Miss Hare ventured to suggest.
Remembering her mother, who had died in similar circumstances, thus she comforted herself.
“I can just imagine you and your mum,” Mrs Jolley said, and laughed. “Living here amongst the furniture. Like a couple of mice.”
“Oh, there was Peg, too, and William Hadkin.”
“Peg who?”
“I can’t remember her name. If we ever knew it. She always seemed old. And had always been here. When the maids left – after the troubles overtook us – Peg stayed, and became a friend. And died, too. But after Mother. I was quite alone then.”
“And who was the gentleman you was speaking of?”
“William was a coachman. He was very deaf.”
Miss Hare paused.
“He was what they call rather simple. Which means that what one knows is of a different kind. Actually, William knew an awful lot. And was not so deaf. I did not like him.”
“And this Mr Hadkin, did he die too?”
“No. He simply went away.”
“Strike a light!” said Mrs Jolley. “No wonder! What did all you people live on?”
“Things,” said Miss Hare, and yawned. “Bread, for instance. Bread is lovely. I love to tear the ends off, and eat it just like that. Going along. And give it to the birds. It is so convenient. But, of course, we had the little allowance from my cousin, Eustace Cleugh, of which I wrote you. Certainly it was not very much, and that was discontinued in the War. Oh, I forgot. There was the goat. I had a goat, and would milk her. Yes, I missed her.”
“What happened to the goat?”
“Please don’t ask me!” cried Miss Hare. “I don’t know!”
“All right!” said Mrs Jolley, whose turn it was to be afraid.
In that house.
But Miss Hare was sad rather than afraid. She could not answer questions. Questions were screws that spiralled down into the brain. She looked at the bucket of grey water, from which the woman’s mop was spreading ineffectual puddles. The woman whose three daughters’ husbands had built with bricks, boxes in which to live. So childish. For the brick boxes of the daughters’ husbands would tumble like the games of children. Only memories were indestructible.
So Miss Hare snorted – she was bored, besides, with Mrs Jolley – and went off into the passages of Xanadu.
But memories also tormented. They flapped like old rags of curtains, the priceless ones with gold thread, and moths flew out, always grey, or night-coloured, scattering their suffocating down.
“We must wrap up our furs, Mary,” Mrs Hare had said, “very carefully, now that summer is here, in sheets of the Herald. And put them in strong canvas bags, with draw-necks. I shall feel uneasy otherwise.”
Mrs Hare had remained mostly happy, right to the end, in the ritual of a past life.
And Peg would run, on her sticks of legs, and say from between her naked gums, which her mistress permitted, because, well, of everything:
“Yes, m’mm. No one likes to have moths on their mind. But leave it to me. No, miss, I will see to it.”
And the servant would show the canvas bags, their necks well-and-truly drawn. Yes, those geese were dead, the daughter saw, and stuffed with the balls of paper Peg had put, to simulate. But the mother was pacified.
Mrs Hare, gentle in her youth, distinguished in maturity, had become a horse of polished ivory in her old age. She would sit quite still for half an hour, then suddenly toss her head, at a thought, or fly. It was her long, refined face that gave the impression, and long, ivory teeth, which she loved to exercise on the fingers of cinnamon toast brought to her by Peg. Afterwards she would continue to sit, while her elderly, refined stomach rumbled with tea and toast, and the waning light worked still further, with uncanny, Chinese skill, at the polished portrait of an ivory horse.
Sometimes she would walk through what remained of the gardens, leaning on her stumpy daughter’s arm, but she did not notice very much. She
preferred to remember social triumphs and the Borromean Isles.
Once she asked her daughter:
“Where is the grotto, Mary? The grotto that your father had them build out of shells. Or was it lumps of rock crystal?”
The daughter grunted, for, after all, nothing more was expected of her.
Once Mrs Hare started to complain:
“I used to hope my daughter would become an ambassador’s wife. She would have long, beautiful legs, and carry a fan, and manage other people’s conversation. In the end there is nothing one has managed. Not even of one’s own.”
“Still,” she continued more cheerfully, “you would not have been walking with me in the garden, in those circumstances, and I might have fallen over on my own, and broken something.”
Again the daughter grunted, because what else could she have done?
Then the mother began to hit the grass.
“Horrid, horrid tufts!” she cried, beating the tussocks of paspalum with her stick, so that the tassels of the grass trembled.
“Don’t!” begged the daughter. “Please!”
Such impotent caprice was, at least, quickly diverted.
“But do not think I am not devoted to you, Mary,” insisted the mother. “I can truly, honestly say I do love everybody now. Even your father.”
For Mrs Hare, whose passions had always been watery, it was perhaps easier.
“Even one’s disappointments seem, at the end, to have a kind of meaning,” she said towards sunset.
And would have squeezed her daughter’s arm if she had had the strength.
Instead, they went inside, the disappointing daughter, and the mother who was, in the end, supported by her disappointments.
Months later, looking at the figure of the dead woman seated so naturally in her chair, the daughter cried because she could not mourn in an approved manner. With passion, perhaps, but that the mother would hardly have appreciated or understood. So she mourned life, instead, such as she herself suspected it of being, from sudden rages of the sky, and brown gentleness of young ferns.
It was fortunate that Peg had been there, because it was Peg who knew what to do. She sent William to Sarsaparilla, and the postmistress telephoned, and some men arrived to take the body. It was a day of rain, and the hall had smelt of wet raincoat quite a while afterwards.
Riders In the Chariot Page 6
