The Complete Short Stories (31 page)

It was not altogether
the undesirability of Ida that persuaded me to take on Winnie. At first, I was
decidedly dissuaded. The family fortunes had just managed to eke themselves out
over my mother’s lifetime. I am comfortably off, I have a job, but I’m by no
means wealthy. Like most of my friends I wasn’t in a position to take on a full-time
housekeeper. And for another thing, I had no room. There was the damp basement
full of rotting boxes which contained a great many other rotting objects that I
always intended to do something about. These included some boxes of my mother’s
that had somehow landed at my house during one of her moves, and never been
forwarded; once I had looked inside one of them; it had held two ostrich
feather fans falling apart with moth, some carved wood chessmen the worse for
the damp, some soggy books and some wine. On that occasion I threw back the
contents into the box, less the wine which was still enjoyable. But I never
again opened one of those boxes. The basement contained two rooms, a little
dank bathroom and a frightful kitchen. It had plainly been inhabited before I
acquired the house.

‘I can’t put you in the
basement, Winnie,’ I said, instead of saying outright ‘I can’t afford a
cook-housekeeper, Winnie.

‘What’s wrong with the
basement?’

‘It’s damp.’

‘I don’t need much
money,’ said Winnie. ‘Your mother underpaid me, anyway. Old-fashioned ideas.
You need me to cook for you. I can go into the attic and make it over for a
room.’

How she knew about the
attic I don’t know. I had once thought of making it into a one-room apartment
and renting it, but it was just above the two bedrooms of the house, one of
which was my study, and I hadn’t liked the thought of people moving about over
my head. So the attic was empty. The other rooms in my house apart from my
bedroom and my study were on the ground floor, a sitting-room and a dining-room
with a divan where I put up occasional friends. The only place for Winnie was
the attic, warm and empty. What made me waver in my resolve not to take on
Winnie was that remark of hers, ‘You need me to cook for you.’ That was indeed
a temptation. I visualized the effortless and good little supper parties I
could give after the theatre. The nice lunches I would have, always so
well-planned, well-served; and Winnie was a very economical shopper.

‘Save you a fortune in
restaurants,’ decided Winnie; for it really was all decided. ‘And with the sale
of your mother’s house, you’ll be in clover.

I didn’t go into the
fact that death duties were taking care of my late mother’s property, she
having stubbornly arranged her affairs so badly. But it was true that
restaurant-eating in London was becoming more and more difficult as the food
and service were ever more inferior. I just said, ‘Well, Winnie, you’ll have to
settle yourself in the attic as best you can. I’ll help you up with your things
but beyond that, I’m a busy man.’

‘I haven’t many things,’
Winnie said.

When she saw my house
she said, ‘The Slough of Despond, if you remember your Bunyan.’ Nevertheless
she settled into the attic. I paid off Ida and from then on was in Winnie’s
hands.

It was true my life was transformed. It was
amazing what Winnie could do. Except for the study which I locked up every time
I left the house and where Winnie could not penetrate, she penetrated
everywhere. A new kitchen stove was her only extravagance. I paid no attention
to Winnie’s comings and goings but it was truly remarkable how she managed to
clean out the house from the basement to the attic so well that I saw through
the sitting-room windows as it seemed for the first time, and my bed was
actually made every day. Winnie achieved all this in a very short time. Within
a week I began to have friends to meals, delicious, interesting, just right.

‘How lucky you are!’ was
what I heard from one friend after another. There were few who would not
willingly have taken Winnie away from me if they’d had the chance. My mother’s
silver and crystal sparkled on the table. Winnie was quite up to serving at a
late hour. And her meals were always marvellous. ‘Oh what elegance! How does
she manage it?’

‘Who is she arguing with,
there in the kitchen?’

‘Herself.’

For one could hear
Winnie, after she had cleared away and served us coffee, muttering to herself
meanwhile, in the sitting-room, still fighting her lonely battles in the
kitchen.

I am a man of the
theatre, and this oddity of Winnie’s certainly appealed to my sense of theatre.
Nor were my friends unappreciative of the carry-on. They thought it was
delightful. As soon as she had left the room they called her a joy and they
called her a treasure. One of my younger friends, an actress who had formerly
liked to visit my mother in the country, had the quick eye to notice, what I
hadn’t noticed, that a couple of my chairs had been newly upholstered in
genuine petit-point.

‘You’ve had your mother’s
petit-point finished,’ she said. ‘I remember she was working on it all last
summer. The last time I saw her just before she died she was sitting out on the
terrace working at this.’

‘How do you know it’s Ma’s
work?’ I said.

‘I recognize the
pattern, look, that’s the Venetian design, she had it done specially, look at
that red.’

‘Well she must have
finished it.’

‘Oh, that’s impossible.
It’s very slow work. For your mother, impossible.’

‘Well, Winnie must have
finished it.’

‘Winnie? How could she
have managed it with all the other things she had to do?’

‘One never knows what
Winnie’s up to.

I was suspicious. But,
looking back on it, I think that the truth is I didn’t want to know how Winnie
did it. It was like admitting you didn’t believe in Santa Claus: all those
lovely surprises might stop.

Winnie’s success with my
friends wasn’t lost on her. She, too, developed a sense of her theatrical side,
muttering ever the more as she served the vegetables or the coffee; and one
evening when I had a few guests, for no apparent reason she entered the room
with one of my mother’s mothy great ostrich feather fans in her hand and gave a
performance of a pre-war debutante being presented at court, sweeping the fan
before her and curtseying low, with the feathers flying all over the carpet.
She solemnly left the room, backwards, treating us to another low genuflection
before she left. Nobody spoke till she had gone, but Winnie’s dottiness
occupied the conversation merrily for the rest of the evening secretly, I was a
little embarrassed. Another time I was having a quiet game of chess with a
friend when Winnie came in unnecessarily to tidy the fire. She had cleaned up
those old chess pieces from Ma’s trunk, they were positively a work of
restoration. As she passed us she cast an eye at the board and said, ‘Undemocratic.’
I suppose she was referring to the kings and castles. But where Winnie was
getting beyond a joke was on those days when, after lunch, I sat in my study
trying to compose my theatre column.

Winnie at that time of
day was usually up in her room in the attic wildly remonstrating with herself.
I could get no peace. Finally and reluctantly I had it out with her.

‘Winnie,’ I said, very
tactfully, ‘you’re beginning to talk to yourself, you know. There’s nothing to
worry about, many people do it, in fact there are great geniuses who go about
talking to themselves. It’s only that I can’t get on with my work when I hear
these arguments going on over my head.’

‘Well, I’m much
provoked,’ Winnie said.

‘I’ve no doubt of that.
And I think you really do too much for me. Will you agree to see a doctor?’

‘In an institution?’
Winnie wanted to know.

‘Oh, Winnie, of course
not. Only privately. Maybe you need some medicine. Otherwise, I’m afraid we’ll
have to part. But I do urge you —I urged her into going to a young psychiatrist
I’d heard of, in private practice. I have no idea what account she gave of
herself and her condition but I’ve no doubt he got some illogical story out of
her. She didn’t appear to think there was anything wrong with her, and neither,
apparently, did he. She refused to go into hospital under observation and he
sent her away after a few visits with some medicine. I made enquiries of the
doctor but he wouldn’t say much. ‘She has a few hallucinations, nothing to
worry about. She should get over it. Of course I can’t diagnose in depth
without her cooperation in a clinic.’ I settled his exorbitant bill. Winnie
carried on in much the same way as before for about a week. She told me she was
taking the medicine.

Then she did get
quieter. Within two weeks she had stopped her racketing and shouting. I was
able to get on with my work.

But slowly the house
degenerated. It was like old times, only worse, because, although I began to
eat out, Winnie burnt the food she prepared for herself. There was a super-chaos,
a smell of burning and old rubbish all over the house. She bustled about
brightly enough, but simply couldn’t manage.

‘Perhaps you need a
holiday, Winnie.’

‘I stopped taking them
pills,’ she said. ‘Rose didn’t like them. They had an effect.’

‘Rose?’

‘Rose Spigot.’

I remembered Miss
Spigot, the cook who died. I remembered Miss Spigot with her specially careful
enunciation, her prim and well-trained ways, and how she was said to have
travelled with a duke’s family all over the Orient. ‘Are you talking about some
relation of our late cook?’ I said.

‘I’m talking about our
late cook herself,’ said Winnie. ‘She’s gone away. When I started to take the
pills they put her off her stroke.’

‘By no means,’ I said
wildly, ‘take anything whatsoever that doesn’t suit you, Winnie.’

‘It’s not me, it’s Rose.
She was a very provoking woman, acting the lady with your mother’s needlework
and objecting to me showing off in front of company. But she was a good
cook-housekeeper, she’s a good manager, and I can’t cope alone with all the
mess. She was another pair of hands.’

‘Definitely, you should
stop the pills,’ I said. ‘Wouldn’t you like me to have another word with the
doctor?’

‘Certainly not,’ said
Winnie. ‘There was nothing wrong with the doctor.

I had to go away for a week to a theatre
festival in the north. I was glad to go, notwithstanding my crumpled shirts and
unwashed socks crammed into my bag. I felt I could face the problem of Winnie
better after a break.

When I got back, as I
put my key in the door, I knew something had happened by the fact that my old
brass name-plate was twinkling and by the sound of Winnie’s voice from the back
of the house raised in argument.

Only Winnie was in the
kitchen when I put my head round the door. ‘Rose is back,’ said Winnie.

I could see what she
meant. The house was clean and shining; my supper that night was excellent.

But it was all too much
for my no doubt weak character. I thought it over for a bit and finally
persuaded Winnie to retire. She went back to Yorkshire, accompanied by Miss
Spigot or not I don’t know. My house is the pigsty of old. My friends are
awfully good to me and I dine out a lot. The stuff that used to moulder in the
basement is now rotting in the attic. Nobody combs Francis the cat, but he
doesn’t mind. When I’m on my own I can always sit down among the dust and the
litter, and play the piano.

The Girl I Left
Behind Me

It was just gone quarter past six when I
left the office.

‘Teedle-um-tum-tum’ —
there was the tune again, going round my head. Mr Letter had been whistling it
all throughout the day between his noisy telephone calls and his dreamy
sessions. Sometimes he whistled ‘Softly, Softly, Turn the Key’, but usually it
was ‘The Girl I Left Behind Me’ rendered at a brisk hornpipe tempo.

I stood in the bus queue,
tired out, and wondering how long I would endure Mark Letter (Screws &
Nails) Ltd. Of course, after my long illness, it was experience. But Mr Letter
and his tune, and his sudden moods of bounce, and his sudden lapses into
lassitude, his sandy hair and little bad teeth, roused my resentment,
especially when his tune barrelled round my head long after I had left the
office; it was like taking Mr Letter home.

No one at the bus stop
took any notice of me. Well, of course, why should they? I was not acquainted
with anyone there, but that evening I felt particularly anonymous among the
homegoers. Everyone looked right through me and even, it seemed, walked through
me. Late autumn always sets my fancy towards sad ideas. The starlings were
crowding in to roost on all the high cornices of the great office buildings.
And I located, among the misty unease of my feelings, a very strong conviction
that I had left something important behind me or some job incompleted at the
office. Perhaps I had left the safe unlocked, or perhaps it was something quite
trivial which nagged at me. I had half a mind to turn back, tired as I was, and
reassure myself. But my bus came along and I piled in with the rest.

As usual, I did not get
a seat. I clung to the handrail and allowed myself to be lurched back and forth
against the other passengers. I stood on a man’s foot, and said, ‘Oh, sorry.’
But he looked away without response, which depressed me. And more and more, I
felt that I had left something of tremendous import at the office. ‘Teedle-um-tum-tum’
— the tune was a background to my worry all the way home. I went over in my
mind the day’s business, for I thought, now, perhaps it was a letter which I
should have written and posted on my way home.

That morning I had
arrived at the office to find Mark Letter vigorously at work. By fits, he would
occasionally turn up at eight in the morning, tear at the post and, by the time
I arrived, he would have dispatched perhaps half a dozen needless telegrams;
and before I could get my coat off, would deliver a whole day’s instructions to
me, rapidly fluttering his freckled hands in time with his chattering mouth.
This habit used to jar me, and I found only one thing amusing about it; that
was when he would say, as he gave instructions for dealing with each item, ‘Mark
letter urgent.’ I thought that rather funny coming from Mark Letter, and I
often thought of him, as he was in those moods, as Mark Letter Urgent.