The Ladies of the House

by Molly McGrann

  Now he saw her naked all the time: the shrunken breasts, the flesh that hung. Her glorious yellow hair had thinned and greyed and been cropped, her blue eyes dimmed with cataracts, her pretty hands buckled and spotted – hands that clutched at him and made him think of chicken feet, of which he had always been frightened.

  He stood at the front window, looking out, seeking her apparition in the dusk. He willed her to emerge from the shadows of the park. She did not come. How he lived Annetta’s death sometimes and felt, in those moments, bereft. She was another mother, now that his mother was dead. She had only ever been kind to him. She kept her handbag stocked with sweets and let him dig; she wasn’t one of those, like Rita, who guarded her handbag and would never let anyone see what was inside. Annetta had doted on him. It was only since she became ill that she didn’t. Now she didn’t even know who he was.

  Joseph went to the phone and dialled. He had been calling Rita for hours. He let it ring on and on. He had never been in Rita’s flat, so had no picture of her telephone ringing off the hook. Here, they had just the one phone in the front hall, next to the coat stand. Its ring was shrill, old-fashioned; it sliced the air into pieces when it rang, but it rarely rang. Only a few times a year, at most, and those were mostly wrong numbers.

  Back to the front window. Sweat poured from him, soaking his shirt. His breathing was ragged, despite using his inhaler. Not now, he thought. Not that now. Joseph had had asthma all his life. He tried to bear it, to live as others did, walking, climbing the stairs, but it left him breathless. He couldn’t go chasing after Annetta; his lungs would riot. He would never find her on his own. He wasn’t good at things like that. Besides, it was important that he should be at home if she returned, to open the door. She wouldn’t have taken a key with her.

  He gazed at the park across the way, not beckoning, just there. The maze of it. What Annetta went looking for, he didn’t know, but every time she was found hiding in a bush. Never the same bush.

  He dialled Rita again, idly fishing among the coats that hung nearby as he did: Annetta’s blue mac, bits of tissue foaming from the pockets, and his own trench, handed down from Arthur Gillies; other assorted cardigans, scarves, Mama’s shabby silver fox buried at the bottom. Joseph stroked the fur, swirling its worn pile. If only Mama were here. Mama would never have let Annetta slip out of the front door like that. Mama always knew just what to do, and she wasn’t above a good slap, either, to keep her girls in line.

  He tried Rita: no answer. He was so alone. He went to the window. Across the way, the park entrance loomed, a mouth that swallowed people. His chest tightened, the breath snicked out. With some effort now, he got to the phone. He dialled, listened a long time, put it down.

  *

  She was up again.

  There was somewhere else to go. Another place, more sacred. Annetta scattered gravel in her determination to get there. Her shoes were boots like she used to wear, leather trotters that pinched her feet, worn by her sister first; not a comfortable pair. Her cardigan (she felt it round her shoulders) had belonged to her cousin; her hat, there on top of her head, the one with the chewed brim, came from a neighbour. Nothing was new to her, not even her underwear, which had seen better days.

  A dog on her heels – that’s how it always was. Outside of town, blue hills in the distance, the smell of wood fires. Tall grasses tickled her chin; nettles she barely touched, just caught the sting of; docks, ferns, feathery evergreens. She swung a catkin like a noisemaker as she ran from the tramps who walked the roads, abominably drunk. Come ’ere, they called to her. Give ’em something they wanted, the makings of a cigarette, or a kiss. She cursed them and they laughed. She was only little.

  There. She dropped to her knees and scrabbled inward, in the dirt. And then—

  How long? She never knew. It was like being underwater: time went funny.

  She heard a voice – someone touched her, a smear of human warmth.

  She pushed and pinched. She fought. She spat, liking that. She pulled hair. She was just getting going and then she opened her eyes. The dog was gone. Annetta scrambled to her feet. She managed to curtsey. She had lost her hat again – not in her hand when she scraped the ground. She toppled and landed on her backside. Her mother would be cross. It was the neighbour’s hat, not hers. Hats went around like that. What was a hat? A hat was to keep the rain off.

  Twigs in her hair, mud in the creases and folds of her old skin. Annetta lay back and closed her eyes – as though if she didn’t look at them, didn’t answer their questions, they weren’t really there. Their uniforms gave her the creeps. No one liked a copper where she came from.

  With her eyes closed, she was in another place.

  It took a long time. They used everything they could think of, every trick, entreating her with smiles before directing her, in stern voices, to get a move on. They would carry her out of there, they warned. There was something off-putting about Annetta. Her nudity, for one thing, but it wasn’t that. She was crude in her bearing, the way her legs drew wide. She spreadeagled and showed herself to them.

  The dog had returned and paced menacingly just beyond the lamplight. Annetta, seeing the brutish stray, cried out, ‘There you are, my darling!’ The dog ran to her and began to lick: her feet, her dirty knees and thighs. Annetta rolled with the dog’s thrusting nose.

  ‘Get that fucking dog out of here,’ one of the officers said.

  The dog licked Annetta’s hand, kissed it fervently, unable to stop, and they saw the closed fist was raw, bleeding. ‘It wants me,’ she said.

  ‘What do you have there? What’s in your hand?’

  ‘Nothing.’ But she began to cry with the pain.

  ‘Open your hand. Let him have it, whatever it is.’

  Her fist opened. The bacon rasher dropped out. The dog snatched it up and ran off. Annetta wept, cradling her hand.

  ‘What was it?’

  ‘It was mine.’

  ‘But what was it?’

  Annetta did not, would not say. She would be led, however, and they left the park.

  *

  Rita drew the curtains before she switched on the lights. She put them all on, every single one, and set the kettle to boil for a hot-water bottle. She had left her torn blouse and stockings in the hotel bathroom bin. Just like a public-school boy to be so clumsy and rough, she thought. Long years of marriage did not make them expert lovers; widowhood made matters worse, for they took it when they could get it and they needed it too much.

  Rita unloaded the minibar from her handbag and, after lining up the little bottles, selected Teacher’s. She drank it neat. She listened to the church bells strike one. Another drink – Absolut vodka. Like paint thinner. Give her a glass of sweet sherry anytime.

  Well. It was nice to just sit for a minute. Wasn’t it nice? Another nip of something and then she’d go and have a wash – the old routine after a date, to keep the waterworks functioning properly.

  Rita thought it had gone well. It was coming back to her now. Dinner was pleasant enough, with few of those sticky silences she hated. When a man wasn’t talking, that meant things weren’t on.

  She tried to remember what she had eaten with Edward. She remembered the first course, a bowl of red pepper soup that gave her the burps, but then what? She poured herself a sweet sherry – at last, a proper drink. She drained the glass and poured another.

  Lamb, was it? Rump? She would remember fussing over a bird: all the bitty parts. Funny that she couldn’t remember – she had a memory like flypaper. She remembered, for instance, that Walter, another one that got away, wore mismatched socks. That’s how she knew he wasn’t married. They always said they weren’t, but half of them were. Edward was a widower. Poor Edward, but then he hadn’t liked her much.

  Well.

  There was one man who bent right over his food and shovelled it in as quick as he could, then sat back and asked her if she wouldn’t mind skipping pudding, he would get the bill and they could be off. But Rita
loved to chat, which made her a slow eater, and she had a sweet tooth, too, so they had to see pudding through. She chewed every mouthful until there was nothing left to chew. She sipped her wine more delicately than usual. She ordered a molten chocolate pudding that took twenty minutes to cook. When they finally fell into bed, he was pure disappointment, chasing his pleasure with no thought as to how she might be getting on. Then he got her in his arms and tightened his hold as if he would never let go – he was one of those. A clutcher. It was beyond human endurance sometimes, agony to her bones.

  There was another, Peter, whose wife had dementia. Bridie, the wife was called. Once a month Peter checked Bridie into respite care and went and found a woman who could see to his needs. For a while, he and Rita had an arrangement, but then he said that after fifty years of marriage he fancied a variety. She heard from him again a few years later, after his wife died. He wanted to thank her, he said. He had a new wife already, someone he met in the sheltered accommodation where he and Bridie had eventually retired. He said, laughing, that the place was full of swingers and they were all having the time of their lives. He thought Rita would do good business there.

  She felt no shame in what she did. Years ago, when she was living in the house in the Crescent with Sal and Annetta, a woman had turned up at the door in tears, wanting to know what it was all about, why her husband was there. Rita had sat her down and explained that it was nothing to do with love, it was a service they provided. That’s what Sal always called it: a service. The best service in town. She made the business of sex sound practical.

  Well. So it was. Practical, that is. Rita always had money in her purse. She earned her own keep, and it was easy enough: undress, lie down. One breast in the mouth, then the other. A lewd conversation: you are this, you are that. Beautiful. Sexy. Soft. Smell so good. And you. Big. Hard. Fat. Old. Rich, or rich enough. Sometimes missing bits – fingers, toes, testicles, or an eye – there, put it there, a water glass next to the lamp. I don’t mind, she said. I want you, they said. Who were they? Who did they think they were? What did Rita care? Men needed her. They spoke to her of their longing, their desire, the ache in them. She had the power. Men wanted her to want them and they believed that she did. They believed her when she said she did and she said – she said anything. Just to keep it going.

  One more wee drink, what was the harm in it? And after such a night, too. Go on, she told herself. Have another one. Who was to say she shouldn’t? At her age! A drop of what she fancied wasn’t likely to kill her.

  She must have fallen asleep in her chair, for there she was when the phone rang at half one in the morning. Who could it be, at that hour? Who phoned so late at night except a lover, or an ex-lover – or a crank? Maybe it was Edward. If he wanted to chat, she would explain that she needed her beauty sleep but they could always meet up for lunch. That was proper. That was the way forward with a man. If he wanted a quickie that late at night – she had heard it all before – she would tell him no. Lunch, she’d insist, and get it in the diary.

  ‘Hello?’

  Joseph stammered something – she didn’t catch what he said, but she’d know his stutter anywhere.

  ‘What?’ Rita blinked. ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, it’s the middle of the night! What are you like? I told you to watch her!’ She slammed down the phone so hard she cracked the receiver.

  *

  Rita met Joseph’s protests that he had been looking after Annetta with a tight mouth. ‘How long has she been gone?’

  He didn’t know. He couldn’t say. It had taken him hours to reach Rita and he was exhausted from his efforts. He let his head droop onto his chest and roll there. ‘Don’t look pathetic,’ she said. She asked him for a torch. ‘You’re coming with me.’

  He balked. Shook his head. He was tired. Rita snapped at him – he got his coat.

  The park was not locked. They just walked in, calling for Annetta, searching the shrubbery and undergrowth, the light of their torch not showing much. Rita cursed Joseph and Annetta alternately. ‘She can die out here, for all I care, running off at this hour. And you—’ She pointed a quivering finger at him. ‘It will be on your head.’

  They looked everywhere, travelling all the paths. Joseph’s feet ached from walking. The moon waned. There were fewer cars and just a handful of lit windows in the houses and flats around the park. It was so late. Rita finally hailed a passing taxi, instructing the driver to go to the local police station. Joseph looked stricken, but she had courage enough for two. Once there, she paid the fare and ordered him out of the car. With Joseph on her heels, she pushed through the station door and declared that they were looking for a missing person.

  ‘Oh, we got those,’ the young sergeant behind the counter replied. ‘Coming out of our ears tonight. Not a single one with identification on them. Must be something in the air.’

  ‘We call her Annetta but she calls herself Ann sometimes. Annetta – Ann – McVie.’

  ‘Like I said, no one’s got ID. What’s she wearing?’

  Rita looked at Joseph, who was resting on a bench. He shook his head.

  ‘The last time I saw her she was wearing pyjamas. That was earlier today. I mean, yesterday. I wasn’t there when she left. I have my own flat.’ Then Rita added, ‘She takes off her clothes. The doctor says she has dementia.’

  ‘Sundowners,’ the sergeant nodded.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Means they have their days and nights confused. They get up when the sun sets and want their breakfast all hours. We get the odd one.’ The sergeant looked in his log. ‘There’s nothing here about birthday suits.’

  ‘White pyjamas printed with rosebuds, then.’

  ‘Excuse me,’ the sergeant said, and he disappeared through a door.

  Rita sighed. She glanced back at Joseph: huddled, staring at his feet. Like a kicked dog, he was. Useless. She looked around the station, at the dirty floor, the cluttered walls, the flyers, the photos, people wanted, people to look out for; smelled the Flash from the corners where the mop splashed. Rita could feel that thousands upon thousands of people had passed through before her, stopped where she stopped, waited and worried and shouted and wept and tried to find an answer. She had been in police stations before, and was nearly collared herself once or twice, but that was more than fifty years ago. Her friends were hauled in and she bailed them out when she could. One girl helped another, back then. She didn’t think it was like that now.

  When she was on the street, just after the war, soliciting was almost overlooked – until the summer’s day when the newspapers, not quite out of news, ran their Soho stories. Smack bang in the middle of the tourist season, slowing a booming trade. Stories about prostitutes and strippers and the nude revues, every kind of temptation for a moral man. Yes, it was true, the politicians said, jumping out of the brothels and into the scrum, each man kicking the next one down until they got to the bottom, where the girls were. The girls were arrested, of course. They pleaded guilty, paid up and went right back to Soho. What else could they do?

  Rita hadn’t lost her fear of being nicked. The personals were full of women and men selling sex, but she was careful. Who would suspect her? She meant to end her days at home, in her own flat – not in the clink getting an earful, begging for mercy.

  The sergeant had returned. ‘I believe you’re in luck. There’s a lady downstairs. Not in the cells, mind you. She didn’t give us any trouble, only she wouldn’t tell us her name. She said she lived in a house but couldn’t for the life of her remember where it was.’

  *

  The Sugar Shop. That’s where she wanted to go. Annetta dozed in a chair, a cup of tea going cold beside her. Her torn feet had been bandaged and wore a pair of men’s black socks; her hand was dressed in a gauze mitt and she herself was wrapped in a blanket. She could smell the antiseptic and it made her head hurt. All of her hurt, the whole way through – she was old and tired and she wanted comfort. She wanted Nell. Take Wardour Street to Old C
ompton, follow it to Frith. The Sugar Shop was halfway down on the left. Stairs to climb, then the door – a brown-painted door, battered, needing paint, the bare wood showing through here and there like bone. When she went into the room Nell would be waiting. It was a surprise for her, a party. People crowded round her; then, one by one, they lay down. Annetta coupled with everyone. That’s what she did. She felt herself tingle in the centre of her, where the nerves drew together into a single bead.

  The door opened. Annetta blinked. ‘Come on,’ the man said. ‘Your people are here for you.’

  ‘Nell,’ she whispered.

  ‘Now you tell us your name. Blood from a stone, I say. Come on, Nell. Time to go home.’

  They climbed some stairs. A corridor. A door, two doors, more; she lost count and started over again. A woman and a man – said they would take her. Signing papers. They got into a car with a driver, another man. She looked out of the window. The moon was a dissolving lump of sugar in the early light.

  The car stopped, she had no idea where.

  She was led.

  The state of the house: like a ruined, toothless face; like crumbling statuary, once great. Strung across, a clematis, dead, barbed, hanging by threads. Cigarette butts decorated the step. The front door was frostbitten, blackened in its cracks.