At eleven thirty she stood at the Axons’ front door with a plateful of the pies in her hand, warm and fragrant. From the hall she heard Evelyn Axon’s voice raised in apparent anger; but she had already knocked. There was a sort of scuffling, a few seconds silence, and then the door opened on Evelyn’s strained face.
“Yes? What is it you want?”
Florence stepped backwards. Evelyn’s tone was coldly hostile. Without a word, Florence smiled miserably, and lifted the napkin to show the pies.
“I see,” Evelyn said, sneering.
“I thought—Merry Christmas.” Florence held out the plate; then suddenly, determination seized her. She stepped forward briskly, up the step and over the threshold, and Evelyn dropped back before her, caught off guard.
“May I come in?”
“You’re in already, aren’t you?”
“I hoped I could wish Muriel a Merry Christmas.”
“I dare say.”
“Is Muriel ill? It seems quite a time since I saw her out and about.”
Evelyn looked at Florence and saw nothing yielding about her; heard nothing apologetic, just the hard note of the professional enquirer. She heard a rustling from above, from the top of the stairs. Was Muriel preparing to come down? If this woman cast half an eye—
“You had better come in and sit down. This way.”
The front room was the safest, she thought, the least informative about their life and possessions. She rested her hand on the doorknob, and turned back to see Florence looking about her. “How is your mother, Miss Sidney?” she said. Florence jumped and followed her.
The door was stuck. Evelyn gasped. Someone was at the other side of it. She heard a clunk, a scraping—the wood of the door knocked against something hard and resistant. Quickly, she turned with her back to the door.
“Is it stuck? Here, let me.”
“No. Get away.” She pushed Florence hard in the ribs. Florence dropped back, and two of the pies shot off her plate and plopped moistly onto the hall floor.
“Well, really. I was only trying to help.”
“You will hardly help yourself by going in there,” Evelyn said.
“I wasn’t trying to help myself,” Florence said. “It is of no interest to me. I was trying to help you.”
Evelyn’s eyes narrowed. “Have you any notion of what you may be doing, trying to force your way into locked rooms?”
“But it isn’t locked. What are you talking about?”
“You have no idea what may be behind that door,” Evelyn said. “Neither, for that matter, have I. Something is holding it shut, and it is certainly not damp.”
“This is absolutely ridiculous,” Florence said with passion.
“Ridiculous? I am glad you can take so light a view of it. Go into the back room.”
“Now look, Mrs. Axon, I simply came to bring you some mince pies. I have no particular desire to go into your front room. Or your back room. I think possibly the best thing I can do is just give you the pies and go.”
“No,” Evelyn said. She pointed to the door of the back room. “We are going to celebrate Christmas.”
Florence walked in ahead of her.
“I am going to give you a drink,” Evelyn said from the hall. “Sit down and stay where you are.”
Florence looked around her. She had never been in the Axons’ house. Her mother, she knew, had sometimes visited. The most remarkable thing was the quality of furniture, each heavy and unpolished piece pushed up against the next, jostling for space on a mud-coloured carpet; surely, Florence thought, carpets are not woven in any such shade. The upholstery of the suite was greasy and worn, the wallpaper yellow with age. What a way to live, Florence thought; creating a slum, here in this neighbourhood. What was the need for it? She tried to place the smell. Cats? No. Well, perhaps she was too fastidious. Not everyone had the same tastes in decor. And there was nothing too frightful, just some pervading air—Florence bit her lip.
Evelyn returned carrying a small tumbler of something pale. She stood opposite Florence, holding the glass. Florence noted with distaste that it was greasy.
“Aren’t you joining me?”
“No.”
Florence reached out for the glass and swallowed it quickly, anxious to have it over with.
“Merry Christmas,” Evelyn said. “At the same time, I must tell you that I regard you as an odious and interfering woman.”
Florence spluttered. “I am sorry,” she said. “I can’t drink whisky. I didn’t realise that it was neat whisky.”
“How unfortunate,” Evelyn said. “I went to a great deal of trouble to find it for you. It is some years since anyone wanted it.”
Florence stood up. “I am sorry to have put you to so much inconvenience. Perhaps you will give Muriel my best wishes for Christmas and the New Year.”
“Certainly,” Evelyn said. “This way.”
“Yes, I know the way,” Florence said faintly. She gestured down at the plate containing the ten remaining pies, which she had placed on the arm of her chair.
“Not really,” Evelyn said.
Florence picked the plate up and walked out into the hall. “You seem to think I have intruded on your privacy. I sincerely apologise.”
“One lives and learns,” Evelyn said blandly. “Muriel is putting on weight, you know.”
“About that door. Obviously something is wrong with the frame. You ought to get a man in.”
Evelyn sniggered. “Oh, we have that. We have had a man in.” She watched Florence down the path.
Thoroughly unnerved, Florence walked into her own tidy kitchen and filled the kettle. She stared for a moment at the mince pies on their plate, then with an abrupt movement picked it up and slid them into the wastebin.
CHAPTER 5
Christmas morning.
“Just shut the door on them,” Sylvia said. It was six A.M. She was huddled into her quilted dressing-gown. The children shrieked and howled from Suzanne’s bedroom. “I’ll go down and brew some tea,” Sylvia said. “There’s no point in going back to bed.” And on this as on almost every other day, a grey fatigue shook her; another baby, what for, when the three were too much for her, but if only she could think sensibly about this, think logically, if only she could run all the strands of her thinking together for just half an hour. She never seemed to have half an hour, that was the trouble. In the cold kitchen she bit into a corner of dry toast; all she could face, these last couple of weeks. The electric light was brilliant and hard, like an operating theatre; her laminate surfaces gleamed empty and scrubbed, ready for the severance of 1974 from 1975. Condensation ran down the windows. Already the fights had begun upstairs; she could hear Alistair working himself into one of his fits. When he was younger, he used to go blue with temper and stop breathing. She moved about the kitchen, aimlessly dazed with bowls and spoons and teapots. She pulled back the curtains onto the blue-black morning; a streetlight burned fuzzily on the opposite side of the road, the great artificial moon which shone each night onto her marital bed. Already in the neighbours’ houses lights were clicking on, the children rampaging downstairs shredding wrapping paper and mauling cats, shaking the ornaments from the Christmas trees. She put her hand against the radiator. It would soon be as warm as they could afford. She had always wanted a cosy house, low and cream, with plump flowered cushions; now she was as cosy as a fish under ice. Another year almost gone, the house no nearer paid for: the piling up of the interest on the debts.
Colin stood by the small window on the landing at the top of the stairs, looking out, with a damp towel from the bathroom in his hand. Some people, unbelievable as it seemed, lived in such a way that they had their own towels. A door opened and Karen lurched towards him, her face streaked with tears and dirty—how could it be dirty?—already. Grasped in either hand she had by the wrist identical dolls, fatly flaxen, improbably frilled.