She said to the young man from the estate agent’s, ‘I hadn’t thought of sharing a kitchen.’
It had taken three days to change her views on money and accommodation. She was sorry now she hadn’t listened to Pam – she had sent her a postcard from the motel with the message ‘You told me so!’, hoping it would pass for humour.
No wonder David had been exasperated with her obstinacy, poor boy.
What had she been doing, instead of thinking of her future? Hanging on to the past at all costs.
So here she was, in a room in Glebe, with a young man who clearly found it painful to watch a solitary middle-aged woman face reality. She had contemplated sharing a laundry, then reluctantly given up hope of a private bathroom and lavatory, but had continued to hope for what were known as cooking facilities.
She knew she had the young man’s sympathy on false pretences, for, as David had said, she was a rich woman now, but she did not know how to behave like a rich woman, and feared that if she broke into the enormous sum, it would crumble away.
‘I wouldn’t worry too much,’ he said. ‘There’s not much cooking done. They all live on takeaways. It’s not a bad place. Mr Constantine keeps up a standard. He’s careful who he takes in. I’m sure he’d take you on trust, though. It has its own entrance and you can rent the garage, I’m pretty sure. You can ask him about that when he comes round on Thursday. That’s his rent day.’
It was obvious that the sympathetic young man wanted to dispose honourably of Ella.
To her newly educated eye the room was not a bad one. Situated on the ground floor of the large old Victorian house, it must once have been a reception room and showed a few pleasing traces of grandeur in ceiling and mouldings. Its windows looked onto a backyard that had some claim to be called a garden.
‘Very well. When can I move in?’
‘We’ll skip the references, I think. If you give me two weeks in advance, you can have the keys now and move in as soon as you like.’
Now she had an address and a telephone number, which had a surprising effect on her self-esteem.
Back at the motel, she began to make a list of things she must buy. Then, reflecting that money beat sentiment every time, she made a list of things she wanted from the house.
She rang David from the motel room and gave him the address and the telephone number.
‘Would you fetch a few things from the house for me?’
‘Sure. We’ll go out there tonight and bring them round after school tomorrow.’
David made no comment, but sounded relieved at the return of commonsense.
‘I didn’t realise how much everything would cost.’
‘No trouble, Mum. I’ll put Martha on.’
Dictating to Martha, ‘The single sheets out of linen cupboard, second shelf … the skillet with the glass lid and the detachable handle …’ she felt humiliated that she was reading this to her daughter-in-law, not to her daughter.
You’ll believe anything, she thought, before you believe your daughter hates you and your husband is in bed with somebody else.
‘… and a couple of teatowels.’
Well, she was lucky to have Martha.
When David took the phone again, she said, ‘Why don’t they get you to look after the house for them? It would suit you while you’re looking for a place.’
‘Hollow laughter, Mum,’ said David cheerfully. ‘I am not popular in certain quarters. They think they were robbed and I’m to blame. I hope they are right.’
The cold, stunting wind that blew on them all chilled Ella again. She said forlornly, inadequately, ‘Oh, dear.’
‘Don’t worry about it, Mum. We’ll see you tomorrow at the new place. About half-past 5.’
The cold, stunting wind was blowing as she rang Caroline’s number.
It was a relief that Max answered.
‘She is not home. She will be sorry to have missed you,’ he said bravely.
That’s all right, Max. I am going to tell lies, too. Whenever necessary.
‘I just want to give her my new address and my phone number. I’ve moved into a room for the time being.’
Taking down the details, Max said, ‘But that is quite near the University. We shall be able to have lunch together sometimes.’
The cold, stunting wind was blowing on Max, too. He was compensating for it with a show of joviality which made him sound more foreign than usual.
‘I’d like that,’ she said, though the prospect of an hour’s unassisted conversation with Max was daunting. Probably it daunted Max, too.
‘You will keep in touch, won’t you? Becky misses you, you understand.’
Poor Max. She couldn’t decide how much Caroline would have told him about the quarrel. It depended on the degree of confidence she felt in her individual interpretation of virtue.
Every confidence, thought Ella sadly.
She arrived at the lodging house next morning in a mood of manufactured optimism, determined to find advantages wherever she could.
She explored the kitchen, found a numbered space in the refrigerator and another in the food cupboard, investigated cooking equipment and was glad she had asked for the skillet – it could double as a casserole – observed that there was an honour system for the telephone in the hall: a notice reading LOCAL CALLS FORTY CENTS NO STD PLEASE with a cashbox beside it, a pad and a ballpoint pen meant, no doubt, for messages – that spoke well of the management and the lodgers. The bathroom was outside the back door in a shabby extension wing with the laundry and a kind of toolshed. The bathroom was shabby, too, and draughty, but the water ran hot and, since there was only one other lodger on the ground floor, she might have it almost to herself.
She unpacked, hung up her few clothes in the combination wardrobe-dressingtable, got Becky’s rug out of the boot of the car – she had anticipated permission by parking it in the garage – put it into her empty suitcase and pushed it out of sight under the bed.
Then, thinking no day could not be improved by a little shopping, she set out to explore the shops and buy food for lunch.
As she was crossing the hall, the phone rang. She moved to answer it. The door of the front room opened and a short plump man with woolly blond hair burst forth crying, ‘Is my call, please.’
That he was wearing pyjamas and was still pink-flushed with sleep added to the urgency of the cry.
Ella stood back confused, expecting an emergency in which she might be of help, but as he seized the phone and said into the mouthpiece, ‘Is Josef, my darling,’ she hurried past, embarrassed and aggrieved. The hallway of a lodging house was hardly a private place.
*
The main street reminded her of Newtown, therefore of Nina – the foreign restaurants, offering Thai, Vietnamese, Indian, Greek, eat in or takeaway, food shops offering foreign ingredients, a delicatessen with a remarkable variety of cheeses, a splendid fruitshop, a useful small supermarket, a book exchange. She came back to the house feeling elated, bringing fruit, cheese, fresh bread and paperback novels and promising herself a second foray after lunch.
She found chubby Josef in the kitchen, now dressed and eating rollmops with bread and butter.
There were two small round tables in the spacious room, each with four straight chairs. It seemed that one ate there, rather than in one’s room. Obeying Mr Constantine’s standards, she found plates in the cupboard and began to set out her lunch.
‘I am Josef. Hullo to you. I am rude this morning, I think.’
‘Oh, not at all.’
‘It is my darling wife. Ring me at this time every day. She make sure I wake up. I work late, come home at 3 in the morning most times. You must not worry if you hear me.’
‘I won’t worry now that I know. My name is Ella. Is your wife far away?’
‘Fivedock.’
‘Ah.’
Josef had finished with the rollmops.
‘She has boy twelve. We don’t suit, see.’
He took his plate to the sink. ‘A big crime leaving dirty china. I don’t but those boys upstairs pretty careless sometimes.’
One way of making marriage work, thought Ella, watching Josef operate the teatowel he had pulled from the rack and making up her mind to use her own teatowels and her own china, too. Mr Constantine’s standards didn’t reach everywhere.
On the second excursion she found a promising opportunity shop, where she bought six very pleasant wineglasses, still in their box, an old white linen suppercloth of Venetian cutwork – some of the bars were broken, but could be easily repaired – and a large picture frame which would serve as a backing for the unfinished areas of Becky’s rug.
Having acquired the wineglasses she had to go out again to get sherry. It would be a nice touch to offer the children a drink – a kind of house-warming ceremony.
At half-past 5, David and Martha arrived, carried in their cartons, set them down, looked about them and were horror-stricken.
Ella changed her mind at once about offering them sherry. A whiff of pathos would finish them.
‘Well, it’s a good deal better than anything else I’ve seen, I assure you. And it isn’t for ever.’
They nodded without speaking and began to unpack their cartons.
‘I put in a few things,’ said Martha. ‘The iron – I thought you’d want that – and the transistor from the kitchen, and your sewing box.’
Her voice was thickened by a struggle against tears.
‘You’re an angel, Martha. I didn’t think of that but I’m glad to have it.’
Praise was the wrong note. Martha gave way. She sat down, placed her folded arms on the table and rested her head on them, overtaken and overwhelmed by a fit of grievous sobbing.
That was a new sound. Both her daughters had wept with rage; only Martha wept with grief.
David stood looking at her blankly, strangely uninvolved. It seemed some limit had been reached – No Man’s Land, Ella thought with dread. That had been Pam’s phrase for a strained relationship: stray shots exchanged across No Man’s Land. If David so much as fired a shot …
‘My dear, what is it? What’s the matter?’ She put her arm round Martha’s shoulders. ‘Don’t upset yourself like this.’
Martha had regained the power of speech, though sobs still interrupted her words.
‘Oh, everything. Everything. That terrible house – I never want to go there again. I never want to see it again. Then coming here, seeing you here – everything.’
‘I’ve asked too much of you. You needn’t go there again.’
That was not the whole story, however. There was more to Martha’s bitter weeping than distress over Ella’s situation.
It was time to be reckless, to behave like a rich woman.
‘Come on. Cheer up. I’ll take you out to dinner. I owe you a good dinner, that’s certain. David,’ she added sharply to the defaulting husband, ‘take one of those washers, will you, and wet it with cold water. The kitchen’s opposite, across the hall.’
Martha stirred in Ella’s embrace, found a handkerchief and blew her nose.
‘Oh, I’m ashamed. Making such a fuss. But the house – remembering things, you know.’
‘Well, don’t start telling Mum about it,’ protested David, as he handed Ella the wet washer.
‘No, of course not. Self-indulgent of me. I’m sorry, Ella. You’re the last I should be crying to.’
But it wasn’t such a bad thing, to be cried for, thought Ella, as she bathed Martha’s reddened eyes.
Martha could well have been bathing her own eyes, but she accepted the attention with a small-girl docility which was not entirely assumed.
Motherless Martha.
The restaurant was a charming lamplit room looking through a wall of sliding glass doors onto an enclosed garden. Eating an excellently cooked boeuf en croûte and drinking a superior claret, Ella was reflecting that there might be quite significant advantages in being rich when Martha broke the long silence with a sigh.
‘Wouldn’t it be nice to be rich!’
Ella smiled.
‘The very thing that I was thinking myself.’
David said to Martha, ‘That’s odd, coming from you. I thought money was the root of all evil.’
‘The love of money. The love of money.’ Martha did, however, appear confused. ‘I could spend it well if it came my way. I fancy I could resist corruption.’
‘I’m happy to hear it.’
What was the undercurrent here?
Was there to be serious trouble between David and Martha? That cold stunting wind, must it blow on them too?
I’ve asked too much of them. I should never have involved them in my affairs.
‘I rang Caroline. She wasn’t home but I spoke to Max and gave him the address and the phone number.’
Martha said bitterly, ‘I wonder you can bring yourself to speak to her.’
She halted then, a non-Ferguson, after all, criticising a Ferguson.
Ella said, ‘This is a beautiful cheese. I wonder where it comes from. Do you think I could ask the waiter?’
The young people looked pained.
David said, ‘About Caroline. I don’t think it’s Louise she’s getting close to. I think it’s Dad.’
This attempt at analysis of human behaviour was so clearly Martha’s province that the women looked at him in astonishment.
‘Well, I’ve got something out of teaching, at least. I know a bit more about kids and what stirs them and how long they remember things. I can remember Carrie doing a great drawing and trying to show it to Dad. He was busy with the mindstretching games he used to torment me with and he said “That’s very nice,” without looking away from this rotten puzzle. You got it right and then he put the clock on you and you had to do it faster.’
‘He thought he was doing the right thing. He thought intellectual capacity could be increased by practice.’
‘Didn’t do you much good, did it?’ said Martha. ‘You took your bat and ball and went out to play.’
‘Why wasn’t he increasing Carrie’s mental capacity?’
Martha, mindful that she was not a Ferguson, suppressed her comment.
Ella was thinking, with pain, that it was Caroline who would have profited by the exercise. The old problem of the Haves and the Havenots troubled her again.
‘Well, I thought then that she was the lucky one, but I know now that for kids, being ignored is the worst thing.’
‘And she’s still trying? Still pulling at his sleeve to show him that drawing? Yes, things do last, longer than you could imagine. My hangup about money. It goes back to the first awful Christmas at Aunt Flora’s. My trouble with money was that I had too much. Dad gave me too much and I spent up big on Christmas presents. Quite the wrong thing. Trying to buy affection, I see now, and of course that doesn’t work.’ She spoke with scientific detachment. ‘I bought Connie a watch – Dad gave me the money for it, he didn’t see anything wrong with it, maybe he should have known better. I don’t know. Instead of … whatever I was expecting … there was a terrible row. Uncle Stan said she had to give it back, that it was wrong to accept presents one wasn’t in a position to return. Connie wouldn’t. He got so angry I thought he was going to do something terrible. Nobody was paying attention to me, I suppose they didn’t notice I was crying myself to a pulp.’
Ella said angrily, ‘You poor child, they might have given some thought to your feelings.’
‘Well, I yelled suddenly, “I want to go home. I hate it here. I want to go home.”’
‘I should think so,’ said Ella. ‘What an insensitive person.’
Martha had paused to drink coffee and gather her thoughts.
‘That was the moment when I saw the awful power of money. The yelling stopped. They all froze. Aunt Flora and Arthur staring at Uncle Stan without breathing, like people playing statues. You see, I went out with Dad once a fortnight and he used to give me an envelope to give to Aunt Flora. I’d never even bothered to think what was in it, for all I knew I was a visitor and Dad wrote letters, but I realised then that the envelope was Arthur’s University course. Aunt Flora would have done anything for Arthur. They stood looking at him and he gave in. “Connie may keep the watch.” It was such an effort to get the words out that you could see his jaw muscles moving, poor man. It was terrible to see somebody so brought down by a small envelope. That all came back when Ella was washing the blubber off my face. That’s what Connie was doing. Dad was coming to Christmas dinner and Connie was trying to make me presentable before he got there.’
‘I hope Connie showed some appreciation for the watch,’ said Ella.
‘In a way, yes. She did say I’d made their presents look a bit silly, but she said she’d take a watch for a handkerchief sachet every time. They didn’t understand that I’d loved my presents, thought the handkerchief sachet was lovely. Oh, well.’
‘Money doesn’t buy affection,’ said David, who had been listening with attention to the story, which seemed to be new to him. ‘But it buys power, all right, and power isn’t always a bad thing. Connie got her watch, Uncle Stan got his, Arthur got his University course. What’s wrong with that?’
‘Everyone doesn’t want power,’ said Martha. ‘As far as I was concerned, it was the opposite. Dad wanted me to come back when he married Sally, but I couldn’t, because of that rotten envelope and what it meant to Aunt Flora.’
Who had had, one gathered, little love to give Martha. Power to some, responsibility to others. Martha, thought Ella, was a really virtuous person, a lucky choice for David.
At least they were back on debating terms.
‘Not a cheerful household,’ said Martha. ‘The first time David brought me home with him, I thought your house was the most wonderful place in the world. Perhaps that’s why I’m making such a fuss.’
‘I’m sure I don’t know what day that was, dear.’
‘It was all right, Mum,’ said David. ‘If there was trouble under the surface, we didn’t know about it. Things went on all right from day to day.’
‘I’m ashamed, though. Making such a scene. Not even my own home.’
‘As much yours as David’s, I hope,’ said Ella, wondering that she could speak with such indifference.
Wine of course was helpful. They had drunk the last of it and finished their coffee and sat so long over their dinner that the restaurant was filling with the later diners. She signalled for the bill.
Martha said with a sudden giggle, ‘Dad came to dinner with a bottle of wine and a huge box of crackers and gave us each twenty dollars for Christmas. Arthur and Connie and me. He didn’t know money was a dirty word. We all sat silent, waiting for Uncle Stan to explode, but he didn’t say a thing.’
‘They could have had some thought for your feelings,’ Ella repeated.
‘He was a good, upright man. If I’d been penniless and homeless, they’d have taken me in, I’m sure, and treated me as their own. As it was, they never pretended any affection for me, which I think was a good thing.’
David and Martha held hands as they walked back to the lodging house. It seemed that some communication of importance had taken place between them. The depression which settled on them as they approached the house was for her.
‘Hate to leave you here, Mum,’ said David.
‘It’s not for long,’ she answered, though she could still see no future beyond it.
Hamfisted Harry, she thought, as she sat on the strange bed, not ready yet to venture into it. That was where the money had gone, not on stock exchange losses but on a settlement out of court, hushing up some final error, the last straw. He didn’t tell me and he did right. I wouldn’t have wanted to know, would rather be living up to something that wasn’t there. What kind of marriage had that been? The word divorce which stood stark in the future reached back into the past, how far? There might have been a moment when he had tried to confide in her and she had not listened. She did not think it likely.
That marriage had been for the future, not for the present. It had been set rigid, that first night on the beach. Nobody’s fault. We would have had to become two different people. I could have loved a failure – more than a success, perhaps – but that kind of love, he wouldn’t have wanted from me. Perhaps he can accept it, from her.
Don’t start thinking about that one.
She found the carton with the sheets and blankets, made up the bed, made an excursion to the bathroom, got into bed and fell asleep easily, drowsy with food and wine.
She was wakened in the dark by the pressure of a full bladder, groped confidently for the switch of a bedlamp that was far away in a house no longer hers, and fell headlong into the black pit of panic. Then she remembered where she was. The memory made things no better. Terror held her.
Somewhere in the unmapped dark, there was a bladder to be emptied, a contact with reality. All difficulties can be solved, one step at a time. The light switch was by the outer door. She found it, put on the light, pushed her feet into scuffs, put on her coat and went into the hall, hoping she would not meet Josef, adding torch and tracksuit to the shopping list which continued to grow.
The hall was not quite dark. The light from a street lamp in front of the house fell through the glass panes of the door and made a pleasant pattern on the worn carpet.
One counted such small advantages.
Emptying the bladder, too, was an aid to relaxation, but the moment of terror had been so intense that she was trembling still when she got back into the bed.
On the dark she projected her planned wallhanging: the segment of sea-green lamé, the froth of creamy foam – the background sand-coloured, of course, but no shine, definitely no shine, no trace of gold. The line of sea green extending beyond the foam could wait till later. On the blank sand, beach umbrellas. There was a way of knitting a wheel shape. Mrs Wilson next door used to knit round cushion covers. They were very ugly, but reduced in size, in fine cotton, on fine needles, ribs in white garterstitch. It was all done by turning in mid-row, easy enough if one worked out one’s tension. A two-inch radius, thirty-two stitches, say. Have to work out the rows, draw a circle round a coffee saucer, fold it into eight segments. While she was calculating the probable number of rows to a segment, she fell asleep.
She woke up joyful, thinking, ‘I won. I handled it.’
That was the trick, to get the mind working on a small, pedestrian task, counting sheep to some purpose.
Meanwhile, today she must begin to face the problems of communal living: when to use the kitchen, when to use the bathroom, how to be considerate and unobtrusive. Certainly, if the other lodgers went to work, she must leave the kitchen to them in the morning. Reluctantly, she pulled on yesterday’s clothes (an unfortunate decline in living standards, not to be repeated) and went into the kitchen to make a cup of tea before the rush started.
She left the hall door ajar for a kind of beneficent spying. Ten past 7, steps clattering down the stairs, then voices in the kitchen. Half-past 7, more steps, a little stir in the kitchen, but not much. They probably didn’t make much conversation at breakfast. Some chinking of china, steps retreating up the stairs. Steps coming down, passing her door. She hoped nobody noticed that it was open.
By half-past 8, silence.
Ella had made her bed, finished unpacking and stowing her possessions and set the cartons outside on her small porch, to be disposed of when she found out what one did with unwanted objects.
What to do next?
That question must never be allowed to surface. It must be answered before it occurred.
At 9 o’clock, she ventured on breakfast in the deserted kitchen.
At half-past 9, the phone rang.
Mindful of Josef’s sleep, she hurried to answer it.
‘Hullo?’
Sophie’s voice answered, ‘Mum is that you?’
Oh, my darling Sophie. My darling child. Concern about Sophie’s character was consumed in joy at Sophie’s existence.
‘Is that you, Sophie?’
‘Well, who else? What an awful time I’ve had. I rang you a couple of times and thought I’d just missed you but then I thought, you couldn’t be out that much, so I kept on ringing yesterday and I rang again last night and you were still out. I was sure there must be something wrong. William said to try David but they were out, too.’
‘We went out to dinner together.’
‘I rang him this morning before work and he told me you’d moved out.’ She attempted lightness. ‘To a pad in Glebe. I couldn’t believe my ears.’
‘It was a sudden decision. I didn’t know how to get in touch with you.’
Children could vanish without trace, but not parents. Sophie, however, must have been coached by David, for she did not comment on the suddenness of the move.
‘Well, that’s what I wanted to tell you about. We’ve found a place, a whole ground floor to ourselves. A couple moving out to a house of their own and taking their stuff with them. I’ll have room to store things for David and Martha and for you, too, if you like,’ she said proudly.
Ella wanted to ask, ‘Are you and William a couple?’
She felt sympathy for Josef, forced to live his private life in a hallway.
Sophie went on, ‘I have a job interview tomorrow. It’s at 10 o’clock. I could come in on the way back, if that’s all right.’
‘Yes, of course. What’s the job?’
‘Just general assistant in a film distributors. Rob heard about the opening and put in a word for me. It should be all right.’ Sophie’s anger had rolled away like bad weather, leaving no trace. ‘She came around yesterday with a cheque. Welcome, I can tell you. See you tomorrow, Mum.’
When Sophie’s voice was silent and the strange world closed in on her again, her sense of loss was terrible.
It would not do. She must not be emotionally dependent on the children. Work must save her, even if she grew to be like Mrs Wilson next door, filling the world with Afghan rugs and circular cushion covers nobody wanted.
She would structure her life, but first she must investigate the storeroom.
She didn’t face the other lodgers after all, that evening. She rang Pam and was invited to dinner.
‘Bit of a change, isn’t it, my cooking for you? Don’t expect anything better than grilled steak.’
Pam asked no questions about the sudden move. She recounted amusing incidents from the shop, Ella made what she could of Josef’s strange marital arrangements and they succeeded in passing a pleasant evening.
Pam said only, ‘Do you need any help in moving stuff out of the place?’ infusing the final word with dismissive contempt, as if the house itself had sinned.
‘Thanks. I’ll let you know.’
Children aged and moved away. Friendships aged and grew better.