The Boarding-House

by William Trevor

  Lady Lord-Blood spoke of fat and flushing and beauty through personality. She expatiated on vowel sounds, but the opinion of Nurse Clock, shared by some of her fellows, was that Lady Lord-Blood’s own vowel sounds were not entirely above suspicion. Sir James, a lean man, scarcely broke silence at all, limiting his activities to the collecting of fees and the composing of further advertisements. One of the other students, a woman called Mrs Cheek who claimed she had never in her life forgotten a face, spread a rumour that Lady Lord-Blood had more than once, ten or so years ago, lit her to a seat in a Hammersmith cinema. Mrs Cheek said that, strictly speaking, the Lord-Bloods’ name was Haines.

  All fees and all extras, such as the use of the hips apparatus, were payable in advance. It was therefore regarded as a serious breach of contract when, on the Thursday of the second week, the Lord-Bloods failed to put in an appearance at the church hall. This lapse and the lack of any message to explain it so incensed Nurse Clock and Mrs Cheek, who were among the keener spirits, that they repaired at once to the home address of the Lord-Bloods, a grim barracks of a house some two miles to the east. They hammered loudly on the door and were eventually rewarded by the advent from within of a partly-clad male Indian. Their request for Sir James and Lady Lord-Blood plainly foxed this man. ‘Try Haines,’ said Mrs Cheek. ‘Haines,’ said Nurse Clock. ‘Haines,’ repeated the Indian. ‘Haines, certainly. I beg your pardon, ladies. I believed you to say some different name.’ They were allowed into the hall and directed down a flight of steps to a basement. When they knocked on the prescribed door Lady Lord-Blood’s voice called out in a peremptory manner, bidding them to enter. They did so and paused. There were the Lord-Bloods, Sir James unkempt and in his night attire, his wife, if such indeed were the relationship, in an old-fashioned blue kimono, with a part of a fried egg on the way to her mouth.

  ‘Yes?’ said Lady Lord-Blood suspiciously, laying down egg and fork.’Yes?’

  ‘We have come for an explanation,’ shrilled Mrs Cheek. ‘We are not at all satisfied.’

  Sir James in his pyjamas was buttering a piece of bread. ‘Now, ladies,’ said he in a voice that Mrs Cheek afterwards described as ‘that of a labourer’.

  ‘Eh?’ said Lady Lord-Blood.

  ‘There was no college at all,’ Mrs Cheek went on, ‘only a church hall. We paid you money. You said in the ad you had a college. Nurse Clock and I would have our money back.’

  ‘They want their money back,’ repeated Lady Lord-Blood.

  ‘Then want must be their master,’ suggested Sir James, laughing and eating his bread. ‘Go away,’ he added. ‘You have no right here.’

  Mrs Cheek commenced to shout abuse, banging about the room. Nurse Clock stood still, anger affecting her in a different manner. ‘Go back to your cinema,’ shrieked Mrs Cheek. ‘You lit me to my seat in the cinema at Hammersmith.’ She pointed her forefinger at Lady Lord-Blood. ‘Your name is Haines.’

  ‘I came in good faith,’ said Nurse Clock quietly, ‘yet you taught me nothing. You absconded before the lessons had run their course. Mrs Cheek and I are naturally grieved.’

  ‘We are unwell today,’ explained Sir James. ‘We are unable to go out. As to not teaching you anything – well, Mrs Clock, there was very little we could do.’ He sighed. His verdict, seeming sincere, hurt her the more for that reason. She was thinking deeply about it when Mrs Cheek, without much warning, picked up a pot of jam and flung it with force at the wall. Chaos followed and was in a moment added to by the arrival of the Indian, complaining that the noise interfered with his studies. He turned to Nurse Clock and said that he was in training to become an accountant and would return soon to Dacca in Eastern Bengal. ‘Where the muslins come from,’ said the Indian.

  ‘Give Nurse Clock her money back,’ demanded Mrs Cheek. ‘If she is beyond reclaim, do the decent thing by her. Nurses do not earn much.’

  ‘Alas,’ said Sir James, and said no more.

  ‘Charm must be there to draw out,’ said Lady Lord-Blood. ‘If Nurse Clock has no charm it is not our fault. She did not say so when she wrote. We are the put-upon ones.’

  ‘Nothing can be done about Nurse Clock,’ said Sir James, and smiled to soften the blow.

  ‘At least her vowel sounds are nicer,’ his wife put in.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Sir James, brightening and smiling more.

  The whole episode of the charm course had a profound effect on Nurse Clock. She was thirty-eight at the time, and she resolved, there and then, in the presence of the erring Lord-Bloods and the Indian and Mrs Cheek, that she was made as God had designed her. She became, then, fully herself, accepting herself and seeing the role she must play. ‘I am E. A. Clock, State Registered Nurse, born beneath the sign of Gemini.’ These words ran through her mind as she stood in awkwardness before the Lord-Bloods and Mrs Cheek, in the presence of a dark-skinned man from the town of Dacca in Eastern Bengal.

  In a moment she turned away and departed from the house. She walked through the lifeless suburban roads, meditating on herself. There, in the quiet peace of an English summer morning, she accepted again the judgement of Sir James and Lady Lord-Blood, ill-qualified though they were to issue it. From that day forth she put behind her certain desires and ambitions. Out of absurdity came truth for Nurse Clock in her thirty-eighth year.

  ‘A prick,’ said she to Mrs Maylam. ‘You shall feel only a little prick.’

  She held the hypodermic up to the light.

  ‘I’ll feel nothing,’ cried Mrs Maylam. ‘Get the hell out of here with your little pricks.’

  Nurse Clock sighed. Slowly she packed away the articles of her trade. She said:

  ‘Have your bowels moved, dear?’

  Mrs Maylam met her gaze in silence. Behind the lens of metal-rimmed spectacles Nurse Clock’s eyes were strangely without intensity; milk-blue, hazy.

  ‘Bugger off,’ said Mrs Maylam.

  Later that day, in the afternoon. Major Eele left The Boarding-House and set off briskly towards the centre of the city. He would, as was his wont on these occasions, walk for a mile and a half and then mount a bus. He was going to see a film called Island of Purified Women, a work with an all-female, all-African cast.

  Island of Purified Women (in which Major Eele was greatly disappointed and afterwards said so at the box office) should, on the face of it, have appealed more rightly to Mr Obd. But Mr Obd did not care for such productions. He had often, in fact, spoken against the exploitation of the black woman by big business interests, especially the employment of his countrywomen in the strip-tease clubs that Mr Bird had given the Major a taste for. In his youth, as a student of law, Mr Obd had protested more against such things. Nowadays, although far from accepting them as part of society, he raised his voice only when he felt it vital to do so, which was rare.

  On the evening of that day in August, at a time when Major Eele was finding Island of Purified Women wanting and was planning his subsequent attack on the box office personnel, Mr Obd, his day’s work done, was standing in a flower shop. He was well known in the shop, for he went there often: in winter for michaelmas daisies and veronica, in summer for roses and carnations, for dahlias and asters in season. He himself was particularly fond of the aster and would have preferably bought nothing else, but Miss Annabel Tonks did not much care for the flower, and had often said so. Nevertheless, he did occasionally offer a bunch of asters, interspersed with a few late roses.

  ‘Two dozen pink carnations,’ ordered Mr Obd.

  ‘What weather!’ said the assistant, glad that someone at last was buying up the wilting carnations. ‘They’re at their best, you’ve caught them at their very prime.’

  ‘I am very fond of pink carnations,’ said Mr Obd. ‘These are indeed beautiful.’

  ‘It’s pleasing to see them leave the shop in their prime. There’s a month of life there yet. One pound sixteen. Eighteen pence the bloom.’

  Mr Obd paid, and the assistant closed the shop, pocketing twelve shillings because the carnations we
re strictly speaking a shilling each. Mr Obd marched off, holding the flowers in the air, clenched tightly, on a level with his shoulder. Passers-by noticed them and several thought what a colourful sight it was, the pink carnations carried so formally by a man from Africa.

  Mr Obd rang Annabel’s doorbell four times. He thought he could hear some noise inside, a suppressed noise, like very low voices. He thought, too, that when first he had come to the door he had heard the sound of a wireless and then the abrupt cessation of such a sound. But he could not be sure. Annabel shared her flat with another girl: it was possible that the other girl was expecting someone she did not wish to see. Mr Obd had become used to such things in England. ‘It is I,’ he called out, and rang the bell again. ‘It is I, Tome Obd.’ But the door remained closed.

  It had happened before that Annabel had not been there when he called. He had therefore formed the habit of writing her beforehand a longish letter which, in the event of her absence, he would leave with the flowers on the doorstep. Once or twice he had even had his chat with her and given her a letter as well.

  He placed the flowers on the doorstep and wrote on the envelope of the letter he had prepared: ‘Well, dear Annabel, I see you are not at home so I have written you this little letter. Stay cheerful, and may we one of these days shortly again visit the cinema. Your own Tome.’

  Feeling gloomy, he walked down three flights of stone stairs and made his way back to The Boarding-House.

  6

  Studdy had gone down to the kitchen to see that all was running smoothly, and to issue a single instruction. He wore an old pair of carpet slippers that he had that morning come across in one of Mr Bird’s cupboards. It was late in the afternoon, the quietest time of day there.

  He called for Mrs Slape and then for Gallelty. The latter came after a minute or two and informed him that Mrs Slape was resting. ‘Rouse her, girl,’ he commanded, his cigarette moving about, precariously stuck to his lip.

  ‘A good clean kitchen,’ Studdy said when Mrs Slape presented herself. ‘I like to see a clean kitchen, a decent kind of place: let us keep our standards up. Mrs Slape, I’d like to see more fish served in this house. I’ll say no more, only that. I’d never interfere. But more fish, and oblige Mr Studdy.’

  ‘It isn’t everyone that likes fish, Mr Studdy. I know that from past experience.’

  ‘Oh, I love it,’ cried Gallelty. ‘Cod steaks and whiting. And salmon trout. Have you ever had salmon trout, sir?’

  ‘Certainly,’ said Studdy. ‘Certainly I’ve had salmon trout. Any amount of it.’

  ‘The price is prohibitive.’ Mrs Slape spoke firmly, as one who knew the ins and outs of economic catering.

  ‘Not of all fish.’ Studdy was at once on his guard, judging whether or not Mrs Slape was defying him, whether she was being obstructive or helpful. ‘Fish is one of the cheapest goods there is. As witness the fish-and-chip shop trade.’

  ‘I was referring to salmon trout. I know the price of fish, Mr Studdy. I was referring to the delicacy, salmon trout, a cross-bred fish–’

  ‘Heavens alive, Mrs Slape, now, I am never suggesting we have salmon trout. Not even on Sundays. Salmon trout is a fancy of the girl’s here, and if she wants it she must buy it in a cafe on her night out. That’s understood now, Gallelty? There’ll be no salmon trout in this house, that I can assure you.’

  ‘The girl must learn to hold her tongue, Mr Studdy. You caused that confusion, Gallelty, with your interruption about salmon trout. Mr Studdy was speaking to me.’

  Gallelty apologized. She did not know what to make of Studdy. She had asked Mrs Slape what it would be like with him and the nurse in charge, and Mrs Slape gave it as her opinion that things would scarcely be affected at all in the kitchen. But Gallelty could not forget Mr Bird, nor the conversation he had held with her on that first morning, when she had arrived with a haversack on her back, ringing the bell and saying she had been taken short.

  ‘Come up to my little room,’ Mr Bird had said, and added on the way: ‘My name is William Bird, I own this house.’ In turn she told him who she was, first of all her name, and then a little of her history. ‘I’m off to Plymouth now,’ she said, ‘to find some suitable work. I’m a Manx girl really. England doesn’t suit me.’ ‘Plymouth’s no place,’ interjected Mr Bird. ‘A sailor’s town. No place for a maid at all.’ ‘I’ve been in trouble; I’ve knocked about a bit. Notice the way I walk? I was under training for a policewoman. You’d never believe it?’ ‘My dear, I’d believe everything. Let me tell you, this house you are in is a boarding-house; it is a place of my own invention. Every one of them here is a solitary spirit. Alone. Every man jack. D’you follow me, m’dear?’ ‘I am alone,’ cried Gallelty. ‘I am alone, my belongings in this haversack, brought up by nuns, en route to Plymouth.’ ‘You must stay here,’ said Mr Bird. ‘You must stay here, you will like it. In this old boarding-house no one has told the unvarnished truth for the last fifteen years. Mind you, I’ve had my failures: men and women with the appearance of being one thing but in fact being frauds. D’you understand me now? D’you see?’ Mr Bird had led her to the kitchen, mentioning wages on the way, and then had taken to his bed with a temperature and had faced death with a full house.

  ‘I’d like to see more fish served,’ Studdy repeated and tramped off, wondering where Nurse Clock was and planning in his mind how he could foil her or be rid of her entirely.

  Later that evening, when Studdy was out, Mrs le Tor called.

  ‘I am Mrs le Tor,’ she said in the television lounge, having been led there and left there by Gallelty. ‘I have had a letter from someone called Moran of this address, concerning the late Mr Bird of this address also. Does any of that ring a bell?’

  Mrs le Tor’s introduction of herself was greeted by a silence.

  ‘I can read you the letter,’ said Mrs le Tor, taking it from her handbag and doing so.

  ‘He did not die with any donkey in his hand,’ said Nurse Clock sharply. ‘I would not allow a wooden donkey in the bed of a patient.’

  ‘There is no Moran in this house,’ said Major Eele. ‘Nor ever has been in my time. Venables, has there ever been a Moran? Venables here is our oldest resident.’

  Venables shook his head. ‘I do not think so. I cannot remember a Moran. We had a Miss Beatrice Bowen once, just after the war. She had to go; Mr Bird did not take to her ways.’

  ‘Mr Bird, you understand, was a strict man.’ Major Eele wondered about this woman who had mysteriously found her way into the television lounge, her painted finger-nails and her fat body. Why was she here? What was she after? Clearly she had written the letter herself as a pretext to gain admittance. Some sort of prostitute was she? They got up to all sorts of things now that the police had driven the business underground.

  ‘Mrs le Tor you said your name was? Well, sit down, Mrs le Tor, and we’ll see about discussing this further. Mr Obd, give Mrs le Tor a chair. That man there will give you a chair, madam. I find this most interesting, a letter of that nature. Eele the name is. Major Eele, actually.’

  Mr Obd vacated his chair and sat on the piano stool.

  ‘I do not think,’ Rose Cave began and checked herself, remembering the presence of the stranger and thinking she could not say that Mr Obd should not offer her his chair.

  Miss Clerricot sat still, puzzled, but not by Mrs le Tor. Never before had Mr Sellwood invited her to lunch; never before, in all her days of seeing to his office needs, had he talked to her so freely or so much. ‘Martin’s is an interesting bank,’ he had said. ‘I have an historical interest in Martin’s Bank, I do not know why, except for some reason I find it an interesting bank. Founded as it was in 1563.’

  ‘You could have knocked me down with a feather,’ said Mrs le Tor, ‘getting a letter like that. I simply didn’t know what to do.’

  ‘Is this your work, Venables?’ Major Eele inquired severely.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Well, that’s that,’ said Major Eele. ‘V
enables has been pulling your leg, Mrs le Tor. Why I do not know, but at least the man apologizes. You will scarce believe it, dear lady, but at the funeral of this same Bird this man here saw fit to dance and holler in the graveyard–’

  ‘I do not understand. In what way have I been pulling Mrs le Tor’s leg? I have never before laid eyes on her.’

  ‘You wrote her this letter. You said so: you said you were sorry.’

  ‘No, no, I did not say I was sorry. I wrote no letter. I do not know Mrs le Tor–’

  ‘You see how it is, madam? This could go on all night. One moment we have an apology and the next a denial. Truth to tell, I do not know what to make of modern England.’

  Nurse Clock said: ‘Mr Venables did not write the letter to Mrs le Tor. He said sorry meaning pardon.’

  Major Eele looked amused and then began to laugh.

  ‘Venables has very intellectual way of talking, Mrs le Tor. You can’t understand half of what he says. He’s got a gramophone in his bedroom–’

  ‘Mrs le Tor does not want to know what is in Mr Venables’ bedroom,’ said Nurse clock.

  ‘Well, you never know.’

  ‘Mrs le Tor, would you care for a cup of cocoa at all? We generally have something of an evening, with biscuits.’

  ‘We all sit round,’ said Major Eele, ‘nibbling biscuits and watching the telly. We like one another here.’

  ‘I don’t understand at all,’ said Venables, red in the face. ‘I have no gramophone in my bedroom–’

  ‘Apologies, there,’ cried Major Eele. ‘I owe this bloke an apology, Mrs le Tor. It is this other man, our Mr Scribbin here, who has the gramophone. He plays recordings of railway trains in motion.’