Copyright
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The right of Hilary Mantel to be identified as the author
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Ebook Edition © April 2015 ISBN: 9780008145552
Also available as part of a collection in PB ISBN: 9780007580996
and eBook ISBN: 9780008145552
Version: 2015-05-01
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
The School of English
A Note on the Author
Read On
Also by Hilary Mantel
About the Publisher
The School of English
‘Lastly,’ Mr Maddox said, ‘and to conclude our tour, we come to a very special part of the house.’ He paused, to impress on her that she was going to have a treat. ‘Perhaps, Miss Marcella, it may be that in your last situation, the house did not have a panic room?’
Marcella put her hand to her mouth. ‘God help them. The family go in together, or one at a time?’
‘There is capacity for all the family,’ Mr Maddox said. ‘The need arising, which God forbid.’
‘Which God forbid,’ she repeated. The idea of group agitation … how, she wondered, does panic ignite and spread? Is it parents to children, children to parents? ‘Can the doctor do nothing for them?’ she asked. ‘There are pills to stop fear. Also they say, breathe into a paper bag. It does good in some way, I am not sure how.’
Mr Maddox – the butler – turned his eyes on her, and she knew she had made an error. Perhaps she had shown over-familiarity. Or perhaps she had mistaken his meaning; this seemed likely. ‘So it is not,’ she said tentatively, ‘a room you go in when you are frightened?’
‘It is not a mere room,’ Mr Maddox said, ‘but a facility. Follow and I will show you.’ But he turned back. ‘If you were making a joke, I heartily discourage you. I myself benefited from the care of English nursery teacher. I am joking like a native speaker. But in such exclusive postcodes as St John’s Wood, or in any leafy part of this great metropolis, it is easy to give offence.’ He patted the paunch beneath his T-shirt. (We are a modern, informal household, she had been told.) ‘Miss Marcella,’ he said, ‘come with me.’
She would never have guessed the door they passed through was a door at all. It seemed like mere wall. Once it was opened, the light came on by itself, and it showed a part of the house that was concealed except to those who were, like the butler, in the know: that was where he said he was.
‘Mr Maddox,’ she said, ‘I am to clean here?’
‘Weekly,’ he said. ‘Vacuum, air freshener, toilet clean. Even if never used.’
‘Which God forbid it should be,’ she said. She looked around her and began to understand the panic room. Mr Maddox showed her the big bottles of water and the cupboard with its supply of snack food. There was a sofa and two chairs, covered in a businesslike charcoal fabric; they looked hard and could have used some cushions. There was a lavatory with a cold block of soap, a supermarket soap inferior to that in the rest of the house. Why? she wondered. Why sink your standards of comfort? She saw how, from week to week, the green lavatory cleaner in the unflushed bowl would pool, a verdant lake deepening.
Against the far wall there was a single bed with a frame of tubular metal, made up with starched white sheets and a navy-blue blanket tucked in tight. ‘Only one to sleep?’ she asked.
‘Sleep is not envisaged,’ the butler said. ‘Within an hour, and please God within less, either the police or the security service will liberate. The bed is for a casualty.’
‘Sorry,’ Marcella said. ‘I don’t know this word.’
She had irritated Mr Maddox. ‘I thought you came here via The Lady. And good English guaranteed thereby.’
‘The Lady is not my employer,’ Marcella said. ‘It is only a means to an end.’ She stopped and wondered at the phrase: ‘a means to an end’. She said, ‘I am English-tested. In my bag here I have a certificate.’
‘I do not give a fig for your certificate,’ Mr Maddox snapped. ‘As for The Lady, I know it is not your employer. Do not trifle. I repeat: I believed that only a person of great excellence in the English language would peruse The Lady.’
‘No.’ Marcella began to feel tired. She thought she would like to stretch out on the panic room’s metal bed. She had seen worse beds, and some of them across the town, in Notting Hill. ‘The Lady is freely available to all seeking domestic work,’ she said. ‘It is only a magazine. It is not the works of Alfred Lord Tennyson. It is not a manual of magic spells.’
‘Impertinence will not carry you far,’ the butler said. ‘Only by a short route to dismissal, and no employment tribunal for you, do not think it. Her Majesty’s Government in its wisdom is pleased to remove legal aid from you whingeing type of person. So once dismissed they stay dismissed. I am warning you.’
The floor of the panic room struck cold into Marcella’s feet. The salary promised was small, but she needed a roof over her head, and here was that roof: NW8, live-in, for flexible person must like dogs, with experience of specialist laundry and helpful attitude, non-smoker. At a good distance north of here, there was a room over a fried-chicken shop, where certain of her countrywomen gathered and passed The Lady hand to hand, as if they had never reached the age of the internet: they were not digital, they could not recharge, they were unable to keep a laptop in case it was filched from their very laps, or any portable device that simply added to what they had to carry; they feared street robbers. The Lady, therefore, scanned by so many eyes, became limp and grey; it became circled in red, crossed in green, starred in blue. In the room above the deep-fat fryers, a woman might conceal herself from officers, police or other types: hiding if she was wanted, hiding if she was unwanted – that is to say, dismissed. She might resort there for a night or more, if she had no alternative but the streets. Sometimes the women lay end to end, exhausted, rolled into sleeping bags or blankets, grey faces vacant in sleep; when they woke, they hardly knew their own names.
So it was with a look both humble and contrite that Marcella made her apology to Mr Maddox. ‘I only asked the meaning of a word. In future I shall buy a dictionary.’
‘Well, you are young,’ the butler conceded. ‘Perhaps you may yet learn. “Casualty” is an injured person. Gunshot wound for example.’
She could see such a person would need to lie down. ‘Who has shot them?’
‘Intruder. Kidnapper. Abductor. Robber. Outrager. Terrorist. Desperado.’
‘Peril on every side,’ Marcella murmured.
‘This is a very basic panic room,’ the butler explained. ‘A bullet will not pierce it, and the air, being filtered, is able to eliminate most chemicals and biologicals, but it is des
igned to accommodate only till the security men come at the touch of a button. I mean, the panic buttons,’ he instructed. ‘They are placed in all living areas.’
‘Are they red?’
‘Red? Why would they be?’
‘How shall I know them? If I do not spot them I might press them when I am dusting, at a time when there is no terrorist threat, and this can lead to The Boy Who Cried Wolf.’
The butler stared at her. As she suspected, though his English was more florid than hers, his range of allusion was less.
‘Of course they are not red,’ he said. ‘They are concealed so our employers can press them discreetly. They are in hidden places.’
‘But I must dust them,’ Marcella said, ‘hidden or not. I was recently in Notting Hill, where I was dismissed for failing to dust the chair legs.’
‘That cannot have been your only fault,’ Mr Maddox said. He spoke as if weighing the matter, and his tone was dubious. ‘In Kensington, certainly. In Holland Park, perhaps. In Notting Hill? I doubt it. You had better be open with me. What else did you do? Or should I say, what did you omit to do?’
‘I was not raped,’ Marcella said. ‘I consented.’
The circumstances were simple and they were these. The family – that is to say, her previous family, in Notting Hill – had left for ski break. The child Jonquil was taken out of school, but Joshua, who was fifteen years old, was left behind, either because he was not worthy of ski break, or because it was his exam year, Marcella has now forgotten; there was a row about it in the kitchen, during which Joshua dropped a glass jar of multigrain multiseed on the floor, and this she remembers because of the complaints made for days after, about gritty grains under bare soles. The upshot was that his mother said, we are going for ski break, Joshua, even if you throw the whole of Waitrose breakfast aisle on the floor. You do what you like, Marcella will clear it up. You may get your chance another year, may I remind you we are a hardworking family and we deserve it.
Later, as she was climbing to her room, she found Joshua sitting on the stairs and crying. He was a huge, thick-bodied boy, and it seemed he was using up all the air, his big face wet with tears, his breath heaving in and out. It was her personal stairs he was sitting on; no reason for him to be there; his room was below, second floor. ‘Don’t look at me,’ he said.
She understood he was ashamed of crying, such a large boy. But why did he come there, if not for her to look at him?
She said, ‘Do not snivel, Joshua.’ She meant it kindly, but she saw him stiffen. Perhaps the wrong word? ‘Sniffle, I mean,’ she said. ‘Do not do either. There will be other ski breaks.’
‘It’s not my fault my mother fucked off and left me with her,’ he said. Left me with a stepmother, he meant. ‘But it’s always me that has to be punished for it. Why’s that, then?’
He did not expect her to have an answer. And yet she did. She said gently, ‘When you are punished, Joshua, it is not always because you have been bad. Often it is because others have been bad.’
She waited. He was not intelligent. He did not understand her. ‘The sooner you know this, the better for you,’ she said. ‘It is not just, of course.’
‘Not just what?’ He was staring at her.
‘It is not …’ Irritation bubbled inside her, and swelled inside her mouth like a balloon. Always she tried to feel sorry for him. But perhaps if he did not take up so much room, and if he were more hygienic. ‘I mean to say, it is not fair. But it is the way things are. Now, hurry. Your father is waiting to take you back to school. Among your laughing comrades you will soon forget your miseries.’
Joshua hoisted his bulk to the vertical. ‘Why are you so full of crap?’
‘Your bag is in the car and I have put your chocolate raisins in the secret compartment, six packs. Remember to clean your teeth afterwards, for they are not good for your dentition.’
He looked down at her. ‘Move.’
I will speak, she thought. It is for his welfare. ‘Joshua, it is truly said, “You don’t know you are born.” I have learned this expression recently and its meaning is, a person should count its blessings. You are blessed with loving family, in part at least. You have good health and education, warm clothes and laundry, food cooked for you every day of the year, pocket money is given you for nothing, and no work except try to be pleasant and polish your school shoes after long weekend exeat, which always you fail to do. Be a big boy,’ she said. ‘Only child cries over ski break. A baby, the age of Jonquil. For you, Joshua, it is time to be a man.’
Joshua had no handkerchief, despite her laundering. She had never seen him with a handkerchief. In case of need, as now, he wiped his nose on his sleeve. He pushed past her, not looking at her, and clumped downstairs. Every provision for tears is made, she thought, but it is the privilege of the employer and his family to snivel in the wrong way at the wrong time to the wrong person.
On the day the ski break began, once she was sure the family had left for the airport and could not come back, she stood in the kitchen and treated herself to a proper cup of coffee, just one. She drank it standing up, as if that made the offence less. It was made from a coloured pod, and for some time her fingers had hovered over the pod box, choosing which colour to have. Acid and thin, the coffee disappointed her. But the ritual, the moment of ease: that did not disappoint. She left the pod on the worktop, glowing like a sapphire on the granite.
She had made a list of all outstanding matters to be achieved before ski break was over, and it ran to two pages, but for the next six days her time was her own to arrange. For an hour or so after the family’s departure, their voices seemed to echo and reverberate through the house, but then silence stole through the rooms, and she went upstairs, to the attic floor, and closed her door.
The window of the attic was high, but a cute little window she always thought. On her first day, she had stood on her chair to look out of it. There was nothing to see but the rooftops of Notting Hill, glistening with rain. There was a mirror in her room, which fronted a wardrobe no wider than a coffin. Hang up one raincoat, one cotton jacket, two work uniforms (blue check overall) and perhaps three other garments, squash them together and it was full. This disturbed her. Did they expect her not to stay long? She hoped to stay long; the fried-chicken room had been taken back by the landlord, who wished to sell it, and accordingly accused her countrywomen of keeping a brothel. So now between jobs there was nowhere to go, and the caprice of an employer, even the spite of a nanny or twenty-four-hour porter, could be enough to make her one of those destitute women who lurked by supermarket paladins hoping for unwanted prawn sandwiches. Papers in bag, certificate of English and the rest; bag in hand, bag stolen; this too often was the fate of her countrywomen. Sometimes, taken up by the authorities, they admitted to being each other. Sometimes, if one was too sick to work, another would take her keys and silently admit herself to a strange house, to mop floors and scour bathrooms; swerving past the mopper in her overall, employers did not notice, and smiled impartially as a body with a bucket shrank past them on the stairs.
So it is incumbent, Marcella always said, incumbent to accommodate to whatever accommodation; the wardrobe offering so little opportunity, she had folded her cotton jacket and put it in a drawer. There was a chest of four drawers, and a second chest, which looked like drawers but was not. It was in fact a cabinet. If you opened it, inside was her bed. The cabinet ran on castors, and you needed to hold it firm with one hand while pulling out the bed with the other, gripping a bar and yanking the metal frame. If you did not exert your strength against the cabinet, it wheeled itself across the room, your bed still inside.
So now in the empty house – ski break under way, time stretching before her – she had a decision to make. She wanted to mark her freedom by lying down. But never during daylight hours had she pulled out her bed. She pictured herself lying on the striped mattress. It did not seem right. In order to have a nap she would need to make up the bed with the sheets and quilt sh
e kept folded on her chair. After her nap, would she put it all away again? Or would she leave the linen in place, and resume her life as if this were a rational house, where beds were not kept in cupboards?
She went down another flight of stairs, to the bedroom of her employers. It was as if the lady were still present, a cloud of her strange scent lying heavy on the air. It was hard to think a man slept in this room. She looked at the king-sized expanse of the bed. It was covered by a light quilt, off-white, a sepia pattern faint against it, a paisley swirl in vegetable dye. It looked as if it had been washed many times, beaten on stones by a woman standing in a stream. But this was not so, for she herself would fetch it from the dry cleaner, swathed in plastic, when the lady spilled her morning coffee on it, or the child Jonquil, climbing affectionately into her parents’ bed, spilled her juice or was sick.
I cannot lie on it, she thought. What if I should pollute? She left the room, closing the door softly to trap inside the scent of roses, basil and lime. She descended one flight, to the bedroom of the child Jonquil. She lay down on her little bed, the headboard stencilled with sheep. Her eyes rested on the nursery frieze. Softly they closed, on an image of long-lashed calves in a meadow of deepest green. The slaughterhouse was not depicted; unless the frieze stretched out, into new rooms, into unknown houses she would clean, long after she was sacked from this one.
At the sound of a door below, she was startled awake. Her mouth was dry and at first she did not know where she was, or who. Because this was broad day, she had not set alarms, either clock or burglar. She got to her feet. I must confront, she thought. Any despoiler. I must defend above all the panelled study with the fitted furniture on which one must not use spray polish, it is forbidden, only wax; I must defend the wall safe, the hardware, the software; I must defend the calves in the meadow, the sepia quilt. She tottered out to the stairhead. Joshua, the son of the house, was coming up to meet her.
‘Joshua? Is it you? I thought you were at school.’
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