by Paul Magrs
But it wasn’t all the dead relatives and the sadness in her life that constituted Mrs Mapp’s demons. No, that girl was plagued by the contents of her own imagination.
See how I call her a girl? Well, that’s all she was, back then. Barely over thirty and the most beautiful complexion you’ve ever seen. Like softest whipped cream on your morning coffee. And yet she dressed in such drab colours. Plantpot hats and smart little shoes, that was Mrs Mapp. She wasn’t one for painting herself up. She was rather scornful of women who made too much of themselves out of vanity. She dressed like a granny, but you could see she was someone special. She was something like a lily, I always thought. Slightly drooping and a tad melancholic in her ways. When she wasn’t furious and stomping about, anyhow.
You know, I liked being her servant. I really did. That thought swims out of nowhere and it jolts me, the sheer truth of it. I relished that point in my life, that whole set-up. That time with Mrs Mapp writing her stories at all hours of the day and me looking after her. I can see her now, sitting in a muddle with her splotchy pens and messy papers, her ashtrays and those bone-china cups she liked to sip cold coffee from. She would write as and when the mood – or the muse – took her, in any corner of that five-storey house on Tavistock Square.
She would sink to the floor and go into a deep kind of trace. I’d rush to bring her writing things as her hands clenched spasmodically. Her eyes went wide and blank. Her long fingers scratched away at the pages, tearing them, spilling ink on the carpet. It frightened me at first, seeing her like that. I thought she was having some kind of funny do. A horrible fit. But she was just writing. That’s all it was.
‘I’ve gorn orf,’ she would tell me. ‘When you see me like that, Brenda, a-twitchin’ and rollin’ my eyes in my head, I’ve gorn orf to elsewhere.’
Oh, she did talk posh and funny.
‘Ever since I was a gel,’ she said, ‘I’ve always gorn orf like that, elsewhere.’
I wasn’t to be alarmed when she went off inside herself.
‘This is the life of the mind, Brenda dear. Most likely, being low-born, you’ve never seen the likes of this before. But inside I am struggling with great forces. Primeval forces of creation. I am fusing together the fibres of the fragments of story that lie within this feeble female form. My imagination is making the world of my story come true. It takes such colossal effort, Brenda dear. I am like God, wrestlin’ with vast chunks of matter – with molten mountains. With earth and wind and fire. It’s quite a to-do. And that’s what’s happenin’ when I’ve gorn orf.’
So, this was how she used to go on.
I would get rudely awakened in the night, whenever one of her creative fits took her over. I’d have to be ready with the papers and pens and the ready-rolled fags. And after a marathon session of composition was over and she emerged from her trance, she would demand sustenance. I’d be forced to come running with plates of kippers, bowls of hot broth and flasks of tea. She would consume this stuff mechanically, and all the while her inner eye would be focused on the faraway world she was intent on inventing.
Quite often she would deem these writing sessions a failure. She’d get up and storm about the house, slamming her frail form into the stately furniture that crowded her home. She’d smash up the crockery as she vented her temper. She spoiled some lovely pieces, did Mrs Mapp. I’d be the one picking up the smithereens, once her vexatious mood had passed.
Other times – less frequent – she might make a breakthrough. She’d write something that, when she read it back, she was actually pleased with. It was alive on the page. It was real. She’d read it to herself, lips moving rapidly, and break out in the most wonderful smile. Those were the happiest days in the house in Tavistock Square: when Mrs Mapp shocked herself by producing something good enough.
That was how she worked and how we lived. She wrote her world into existence slowly, obsessively, and I danced attendance around her. I dodged her moods and the flying crockery shards. I made eggy bread in the night and I patted her back when she sobbed because the writing wasn’t working out and the world she was making was frittering away under her fingers.
Oh, it hurt her when it wasn’t working.
‘It isn’t coming alive for me, Brenda, she wailed and despaired. Those worst periods always seemed to be in the wee small hours. They were awful interludes, when Bloomsbury seemed very quiet and still all around us, as if we were the only two women alive in the world.
‘I can’t make it live. It is desolate, empty tonight . . . I can’t bring the spark of life to my world. I can’t reach it . . . I can’t get to Qab . . .’
Well, sometimes the things she said left me utterly bewildered. I just got on with the most basic tasks. The everyday stuff.
I concentrated on my routines. The things I knew how to do. Things like eradicating the awful pong of cats in the back garden, or placing lavender in deep heavy bowls all around the house, hoping its lulling scent would soothe my mistress. I loved to wax the furniture she’d inherited from her parents. I would stroke those chairs and tables and cupboards, feeling them all over like I loved them so much I had to cover their every inch with my caresses. Bit by bit, every corner of that house became known to me, through the endless process of buffing and dusting. The house and its contents became as familiar to me as my own body.
On the other hand, Mrs Mapp seemed much less at home than I did, even in her own space. She minced about on those tiny feet. She floated and bobbed awkwardly about the place. She only seemed to relax when she went into one of her queer spells of composition.
‘It’s true, Brenda dear,’ she once told me. ‘I’m only really at peace when I’ve gorn orf elsewhere.’
I was dishing out the eggs and the devilled kidneys one morning in the breakfast room when Mrs Mapp found me and tackled me.
‘Well, Brenda dear?’
I was making a big show of fussing with the silver salvers. ‘Yes, madam?’
Then she was hovering over me. ‘Tell me! Put me out of my misery! Tell me what you thought!’
I looked at her and bit my lip. ‘You know, Mrs Mapp. Reading’s not really my thing. I mean, only the paper, or a serial in my magazine, perhaps. I find it hard, concentrating on the high-flown stuff that you go in for. I don’t know that I understand half of it, really . . .’
She put a hand to her forehead and I could see that she was marshalling her temper. She clenched her teeth and interrupted my idiotic flow. ‘I happen to know that you sat up all night with it, Brenda dear. I sat on the stairs outside your door last night. I saw the light spilling on to the landing. I heard your bedsprings’ ghostly rumbling. I could hear you turning the pages over. I know you read my manuscript last night, just as I begged you to.’
Begged! I thought, straightening up the crispy bacon rashers with the special tongs. Commanded, more like.
‘So I know that you read my book from cover to cover, Brenda dear.’ Her eyes flashed in triumph.
What cheek! I thought. The mistress spying on the maid like that. As if I had no right to privacy, or a decent night’s unbroken rest. I looked at her and caught the desperate look in those watery blue eyes. I knew I had to answer her properly.
I had indeed sat up in my narrow bed all night long, giving my full attention to her bizarre story. I had been drawn along on that peculiar quest in the strange and savage land created by my mistress. In the story – as far as I could make out – a disparate group of characters travelled through all kinds of jungles and deserts and mountain ranges, making their way steadily towards a city. Not just any city. A city populated by warrior women, who all lived in their separate palaces, tended to by servile lizard men. All these warrior women believed themselves to be queen in their own homes. All of them vied for power and were ruthless, utterly ruthless, in the ways they went about gaining it. But all were ruled by the imperious Queen of Qab, who lived in the biggest palace of all, in the very centre of the city. Though they muttered and schemed, the warrior women c
ould never get rid of this beautiful, wicked, blood-drinking queen. It was the Queen of Qab who welcomed the heroes of the book into her realm and the secret heart of her palace, and soon our heroes learned that they were at the mercy of Her who must always be obeyed. And that’s when things turned very nasty indeed.
So that was Mrs Mapp’s book. Just after dawn, when the birds were belting out their cheery songs over our rooftops, I came to the end of it. Maybe I didn’t fully comprehend it. Maybe I had drifted off and dreamed some of the stranger bits. But now I felt muddled and somehow stirred up by what I had read. Mrs Mapp’s book had disturbed me, and I didn’t understand how or why.
I looked at her levelly. ‘I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it, to be honest, madam.’ I watched my poor mistress flinch, like I’d turned round and slapped her. ‘I’m sure it’s very well written and all. But it isn’t really intended for the likes of me, is it? I’m ignorant and I like down-to-earth things. I like a bit of crime and a nice detective mystery. All this talk of. . . of other lands and worlds. And that terrible queen who tortures them and plays with their minds like she does! Oh, I’d hate to meet someone like that. However did you dream her up? It leaves me feeling a bit creepy, really.’
Her expression had grown sour. ‘Creepy?’ she said, very quietly. ‘I made you feel creepy, did I?’
‘I’m sure it was all over my head. What you need is one of your friends to read it. Someone brainier than I am. Someone like . . . like Mr Rupert Von Thal, perhaps. Or his friend Professor Quandary. They’ll be able to tell you. They’ll be able to reassure you, I’m sure, that it’s a marvellous piece of work. I’m sure it is. It’s just . . . I’m just a servant, Mrs Mapp, and I don’t know anything about other worlds and fancy books and what-have-you . . .’
She narrowed her eyes, studying me. ‘Maybe that’s not such a bad idea. Mr Von Thal is well travelled. He is what he would describe as a man of the world. I believe he has even written some articles of his own about his escapades with Professor Quandary in the further-flung reaches of the Empire. Hmmm. Yes, it’s a very good thought, Brenda dear. Thank you. I will send a note round at once. I’ll invite him to supper this evening and I will ask him to take away the manuscript.’ She stopped musing and looked at me sharply. ‘Where is it, by the way, Brenda dear? Did you put it tidily back into the folder? I hope you didn’t cover it in tea stains and finger smudges and biscuit crumbs, hmmm?’
So the next thing was, I was dispatched to drop a note in person at the residence of Mr Rupert Von Thal – noted memoirist and brave explorer of the more savage and untamed tropical lands.
I had met him before, and taken his hat and cane, and served on him at dinner a number of times. I knew he cut a dashing figure. He wore one of those moustaches I’m rather keen on and was, on the whole, a fine specimen of a man. He was given to planting himself foursquare in front of the fire and congratulating me on my splendid chops. How I loved to hear him praise the sundry dainties I served up. It seemed I never failed to provoke that manly appetite of his. Secretly, I was rather glad to whiz round to his house near Regent’s Park with madam’s urgently scribbled supper invitation. It had been no accident that I had suggested his name. I liked a nice look at him, Mr Rupert.
It was a mild spring day. London was coming back alive. You have to remember, it wasn’t so long since all the mess and disaster of the Martian invasion. There were still great big chunks of the capital missing and the rebuilding work was somewhat slow. That morning the city was alive with promise and I hardly felt my lack of sleep as I dashed through the narrow byways of Fitzrovia. Then I was bustling down the heavy thoroughfare of the Euston Road, dodging cabs and the new motorised vehicles.
I was just turning in to Baker Street when I was assailed by one of those weird moments of déjà vu that I’m prone to. I paused in the road as one of my fragmented memories came bubbling unwilled to the surface of my mind.
I had been here before. Not just in recent months, passing messages to and from Mr Rupert Von Thal. Several years ago . . . I had been here in Baker Street, hadn’t I? I’d been up to my neck in some kind of adventure. I could just about remember being in an upstairs room in one of these narrow houses. There was a man . . . looking ever so crossly at me as I sat there on his settee. And another man was there, looking sternly at me also.
No use. It was gone. Whatever I had glimpsed was a part of some other life. It might as well be another Brenda. It was like I was fishing for memories sometimes. Like tickling for trout in a particularly murky stream. With a flash of brilliant scales the trout was gone, back into the depths.
I shook myself awake – just in time, as a milk van honked at me and I hastened to the kerb and took myself off to complete my mission as instructed.
Oh, these moments of reverie. How I wished they’d just leave me alone. Didn’t I have enough in my life to look after? With Mrs Mapp and her tall house and her devotion to her art? Why did my obscure past try to reclaim me periodically? Really, what was so special about me?
I pushed these thoughts away. Thinking too hard never brought happiness to anyone, did it? Just look at Mrs Mapp and the way she cudgelled her delicate brains. And what for? Just to produce that strange book of hers.
It had made me feel downright peculiar. Even in the spring sunlight that sensation clung to me. I wondered what other people would make of it. People like the lovely and virile Rupert Von Thal.
Ah, here he was. Emerging on to the busy street bang in front of me. I had only just caught him in time, as he slammed shut his glossy front door. He took a deeply appreciative sniff of the London air. His momentous moustache looked to be waxed to a point at both ends.
I was about to step out in front of him when he turned to look me straight in the eye. Wonderful instincts he had. He always said his instincts were honed and very well seasoned by all the time he had spent in the bush.
Mr Rupert was amused by my flummoxing and stammering in his presence. Just as he was amused by Beatrice Mapp’s curt missive:‘Mr Von Thal – you’re needed. Supper tonight at Tavistock Square.’
That evening he appeared at our door with sheaves of pink lilies. Their scent greeted me in a rush as I led him into the hall. He was resplendent in a lounge suit of burgundy and cream. He looked rather like a summer pudding, and I felt myself go queasy as I relieved him of his unwieldy bouquet.
Naturally I overheard most of their supper conversation, these two old friends, as I waited on them. I was giving them my goulash - a rustic, peppery broth, the recipe for which I picked up somewhere, I can’t even recall where. Mrs Mapp was gratified by this exotic savour, even as she fanned her mouth genteelly at the piquant spices. I hovered to see Mr Rupert’s reaction to the meal I had carefully prepared that afternoon, and got a nod and a wink for my pains. He was far more intent on his conflab with the mistress of the house than he was on the stew before him.
Mrs Mapp had a touch of hauteur about her, I noticed. She liked to pretend to hold Mr Rupert at arm’s length. I could always see through that. I knew that deep down she was mad about the boyish adventurer.
‘Your mentor . . .’ she began.
He frowned. ‘He’s not really my mentor.’
‘Professor Quandary,’ Mrs Mapp went on. ‘The two of you together have experienced a number of strange exploits, have you not?’
Mr Rupert smiled, and I could see he was enjoying this latest jousting match. ‘Indeed. But we go into these things, Mrs Mapp, as equals. The professor is not my mentor. We both have a great deal to learn from each other, and we complement each other with our separate gifts in these . . . adventures of ours.’
‘Quandary,’ Mrs Mapp tutted. ‘What a ridiculous name. Made up, of course?’
‘Only a very few know the true identity of the brilliant professor.’
‘I should like to meet him again one day.’
‘And he would like to see you too, Mrs Mapp. I believe you made a great impression on him, the day I introduced you, after his lect
ure on the affair of the wicked London Monster.’
Mrs Mapp seemed ever so pleased to be remembered by the famous professor. I hadn’t met him as yet, but I’d read all about his many adventures in the Illustrated Fitzrovian Spree, several of them written up by Rupert Von Thal himself in his breathlessly enthusiastic prose. I’d even read the account of their besting that horrible London Monster, which Mr Rupert had just alluded to.
Anyhow, as I got on with clearing their supper things and topping up their goblets with tangy red wine, Mrs Mapp eventually worked her way round to the reason for the evening’s peremptory summons.
‘You’ve finished your book!’ Mr Rupert’s expression was alight with amusement, but also pleasure in Mrs Mapp’s muted triumph.
‘And it is an adventure story, Mr Von Thal. One I thought, perhaps, you may find of some slight interest.’
‘I’m sure I will. An adventure! But Mrs Mapp – forgive me – what does a lady like you know about . . . ?’
‘Adventures?’ Her mouth quirked into a pretty little smile. She was an exquisite thing, really. The likes of Mr Rupert Von Thal stood nary a chance before her subtle charms. ‘I know all I need to know about adventures. They are all up here, inside my mind. Here I have adventures all day and night long. Locked within my own seclusion . . . such outrageous happenings . . .’
His eyes were fixed on her. He gave a little cough before he said, ‘May I read it? This book of yours?’
