©2006 by Will Ryan
Copyright © 2006 Prof. Theophilus Amadeus Gotlieb Zeus
Charlady’s Choice
by Neil Schofield
In the five years since we first published Mr. Schofield’s work — when he was a newcomer to the field, with only a few published stories — he’s gone on to become one of the best and most prolific writers of the short mystery. In his latest tale he has some fun at the expense of “big-name” writers and the publishing business.
Thus Mrs. Ethel Hoskins and her great friend Mrs. Vera Bumstead, friends of forty years, widows both, cleaning ladies both, in the snug bar of the Ring O’ Bells in Camden Town: Ethel was a small port and lemon, Vera was a Gin and It, because the vermouth helped her digestion, she said. Both had the thin, tired faces of women who had been through it a bit, but who believed firmly that you mustn’t grumble, worse things happen at sea, look on the bright side, it could be worse. Both wore clothes suited to their calling of charlady: worn dresses that had seen better days, pinafores with multiple pockets for holding dusters and other ephemera and impedimenta, and flat, comfortable shoes. It was a treat for both of them to slip off their shoes under the table and sip their drinks while waiting for their buses. Vera took the 13 up to Chalk Farm, while Ethel caught the 29 to Holloway. The Ring O’ Bells was their way station and their Wailing Wall.
“Writers,” said Ethel, taking a vicious sip from her port and lemon, “I wouldn’t give them house room.” Ethel was a stocky, aggressive woman with a pronounced chin and blazing blue eyes. Vera was smaller and fainter, like a bad photocopy of herself.
“Playing you up, then, is he, your bloke?” said Vera with sympathy. She knew as well as anyone just how a customer could play you up.
“Missis Hoskins, I wender,” said Ethel, her voice modulating into an excruciating parody, “I wender if it wed be too much to ask you to hoover more thoroughly under the tables in mai steddy?”
“Steddy, is it?” said Vera.
“Steddy, my arse,” said Ethel, “pardon my French, Vera, but I speak as I find. More like a rubbish dump. Paper everywhere. Piles of it. Never saw so much paper in your life. Mr. bloody Jolyon Carstairs. You believe that? Jolyon. What sort of a name is that? Mind you, I had a Jasper once. What’s happened to the good old names? Wilf. Arnold. Walter.”
“Bert,” said Vera, invoking the name of Ethel’s defunct husband, who had been as stocky and aggressive as Ethel.
“Ah yes. Bert,” said Ethel, a nostalgic look in her eyes. “But Jolyon. Writers,” she said again, plunging her nose into her glass, “I can’t be doing with them. If I’d known it was going to be a writer, I’d ’ave told the bloody agency to stick their job up their jacksy.”
She was talking about the Golden Mop Agency in Camden Town who supplied cleaning services to that gilded little neighbourhood adjoining Regent’s Park and Primrose Hill, peopled in large part by writers, artists, actors, and other bohemians. If you lived in NW1 and you needed a duster wafted round your bibelots of a morning or an afternoon, Golden Mop was your man. Or your woman, as was more popularly the case.
Vera nodded.
“I wouldn’t mind,” said Ethel, “but it’s that click, click, click all the time on their computers. Drives you round the bend.”
Vera said, “Well, you won’t have that with Mr. bloody Mervyn Fincham while I’m in Margate. He won’t have a computer. Uses a real old-fashioned typewriter. Clack, clack, clack, he goes.”
“Won’t have a computer?”
“Won’t even have a phone.”
Ethel considered this outlandish concept for a moment. She said, “What is he, then? Barmy?”
“No, ’e’s not barmy. Not dangerously barmy anyway. He’s just a bit wossername — eccentric. That’s it, eccentric.”
“Well, he’d better not come near me with his eccentric,” said Ethel.
“Oh, he won’t come near you. He doesn’t like people. He doesn’t talk to anyone, no one comes to the flat.”
“Hermit sort of affair, is he then?”
“A bit like that. But don’t worry. You won’t have any trouble with him. I’ve told him you’re taking over for me for two weeks and it’s all right with him. You won’t even know he’s around the place. He goes out for a walk in the morning. He’s like clockwork. Two hours he’s out. The rest of the time, he’s clacking away like the clappers. He doesn’t like to talk. He leaves notes all the time. ‘Please polish the floor in the front hall.’ ‘Do not answer the door on any account.’ Stuff like that. In this really rotten spiky writing. Terrible. I’ve never seen handwriting like it. Worse than a doctor’s, it is.”
But Ethel was only half listening, brooding into her drink.
“I always wanted to try that writing lark,” she said musingly. “I mean, can’t be that hard, can it? I mean, I’ve read loads of stuff, Agatha Christie, that Mary Higgins Clark and that P. D. James. Jack Frost is good, too. Doesn’t seem to me it’d be too difficult.”
Vera had the look that said Ethel was reaching above her station.
“You got to know stuff,” she said warningly.
“I know stuff, Vera,” said Ethel scornfully. “I seen things you wouldn’t believe, I have. Be nice having people reading your books, have a nice house, going on Woman’s Hour, being interviewed and that. Have three names. I like writers with three names. There’s lots. Mary Higgins Clark. That Barbara Taylor Bradford. That Joyce Carol Wossername. Three names adds something.”
“Authority,” suggested Vera.
“Maybe,” conceded Ethel. “What I’m saying is it can’t be hard. I’ve read some of my bloke’s stuff, he leaves it lying about all the time. Mr. Jolyon Carstairs. Tripe, it is. Complete and utter tripe. I could do better than that with me eyes closed, wearing boxing gloves. And here’s me with my legs under the doctor, doing the charring for ’im. Does that seem right to you? It doesn’t to me.”
“But you have to have the typing,” said Vera.
“Oh, I got the typing. Piece of piss that is, excuse my French, Vera. My Norma taught me all that. Gave me lessons. Type away like a good’un, I can. Computers and everything. Only on a computer it’s not called typing. Word Pro-cessing, it’s called,” she added kindly and carefully.
“Word pro-cessing. Well, there’s a thing,” said Vera, impressed.
“All I’m saying is, it can’t be hard, if your bloke can do it and my bloke can do it. I’ve a good mind to have a go at it, you just see if I don’t. I can’t go on like this with my legs. I deserve a bit of luxury, I do, after all these years.” Her chin jutted out aggressively. Vera was slightly taken aback. She had never heard her friend speak so bitterly and assertively about anything save the price of port. She tried to shift the subject onto more neutral ground.
She said, “You’re sure you can manage both of them?”
“Don’t you worry your head,” said Ethel. “I’ll do your Mervyn Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Then I’ll go have a nice bit of lunch in the café in Camden High Street. And I’ll do Mr. bloody Jolyon Carstairs in the afternoons Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, Saturdays is when I do his windows, see. No problem. You go off and have a lovely time with your Sandra. Get yourself a drop o’ sunshine. You can do the same for me when I go see my Norma in Clacton.”
“I’ll send you a postcard, Ethel,” said Vera, “nice postcard from Margate. That’ll cheer you up.”
And they finished their drinks, Ethel and Vera, very pleased with themselves and their arrangement.