I was invariably fascinated with the place as I carefully (too carefully) watered the plants, replaced the books in alphabetical order, shuffled untidy piles into tidy piles, and carefully (too carefully) hoovered the carpeted floor and dusted around.
I love charging around with a duster. It’s one of the only jobs I do where I can actually see a result.
And I like seeing a result...
There was only one thing wrong with that room.
The cat.
I hate all cats but especially this cat, which occasionally looked at me in a mysterious knowing aristocratic potentially ferocious manner.
Like his mistress.
A small two-way cat-flap had been cut into the door leading from the conservatory to the rear garden through which the frequently filthy-pawed “Boswell” (huh!) would make his exits and his entrances.
Ah, but bless you, Boswell!
I felt confident that Mrs. Spencer-Gilbey could not have taken up my single reference since from the beginning she called me “Virginia” without the slightest hint of suspicion.
For my part, I called her “ma’am,” to rhyme with “jam.” It was five syllables shorter than any more formal address, and I think the royal connotation was somewhat pleasing to her.
Early on the Wednesday morning of my third week the amateurish tack-tack-tack of the typewriter in the conservatory stopped and my employer came through into the downstairs lounge to inform me she had to go out for two hours.
It was at that point I made my first bold move.
I took a leather-bound volume from the bookshelf beside me and blew a miniature dust-storm along the golden channel at the top of its pages.
“Would you like me to give the books a wipe with a duster?”
For a few seconds I thought I saw in those cold grey eyes of hers something very close to hatred.
“If you can put them all back exactly as you found them.”
“I’ll try, ma’am.”
“Don’t try. Do it!”
It was going to be a big job.
Bookshelves lined three whole sides of the room, and at mid-morning I had a coffee-break in the kitchen.
Outside by the garden shed I saw the steatopygous odd-job man who appeared intermittently — usually when I was leaving — to fix a few things as I supposed.
I held my coffee-cup up to the window and my eyes asked him if he’d care to join me.
His eyes replied yes and I saw he was younger than I had thought.
More handsome too.
I asked him how well he knew her ladyship but he merely shrugged.
“She’s writing a book, did you know?” I asked.
“Really?”
He took a swallow of his coffee and I saw that his hands though grubby enough were not those of a manual labourer.
“On Sir Thomas Wyatt,” I continued. “I had a look when I was hoovering.”
“Really?”
If his vocabulary seemed rather limited, his eyes ranged over me more widely, and he smiled in a curiously fascinating way.
“I don’t suppose you know much about Sir Thomas Wyatt?”
He shrugged again. “Not much. But if you’re going to tell me he died in 1542, you’ll be wasting your time, won’t you?”
Jesus!
He smiled again, this time at my discomfiture; then leaned forward and kissed me fully on the lips.
“Are you on the pill?”
“It’s all right. You see, I’m pregnant,” I replied.
Afterwards we dared to have a cigarette together. It was the first I’d smoked for six months and it tasted foul.
Stupid!
His lighter was out of fuel and I used one of the extra-long Bryant & May matches kept in the kitchen for various purposes.
For various purposes...
I’d almost finished the second wall of bookshelves when milady came back.
Just after I had turned round to acknowledge her presence a single sheet of paper fluttered to the floor.
Quickly I bent down to pick it up but she was immediately beside me, snatching it from my hand.
It was only a brief note and its contents could be read almost at a glance:
Darling J
Please do try to keep these few lines somewhere as a memento of my love?
The message had been typed on cheap thin paper with the signatory’s name written in light-blue Biro — “Marie,” the “i” completed in girlish fashion with a largish ring instead of the usual dot.
But Mrs. S-G said nothing, and half an hour later I was on my way home — unobtrusively as ever.
I had advertised to no one the fact that I was working as a part-time charwoman and I took care to be seen by as few people as possible.
There were reasons for this. You will see.
The following Monday I asked Mrs. S-G if I could vary my time slightly and start half an hour earlier.
“Do you have to?” Her voice was contemptuous of the request.
“It’s just that if I caught the earlier bus—”
“Oh, don’t explain, for heaven’s sake! Do you have to? — that’s all I asked.”
I said I did, and it was agreed that I should henceforth begin at 8:30 A.M.
On Friday of that same week the postman called at 8:50 A.M., and three letters seemed to slither through the front door: a communication from British Telecom; a letter addressed to Mrs. S-G, marked “Strictly Private”; and a letter for Mr. S-G, the name and address written in light-blue Biro, the “i” of “Squitctley” completed in girlish fashion with a largish ring instead of the usual dot.
Even as I picked up the letters I knew that my employer was just behind me.
“Thank you. I’ll take them.”
Her manner was offensively brusque. But I made no demur and continued wiping the skirting boards around the entrance hall.
“I’m sorry,” I said (it was the following Wednesday), “but I shan’t be able to come on Friday.”
“Oh?”
“You see I’ve got to go to the ante-natal clinic...”
“Don’t explain, for heaven’s sake. I thought I’d told you that before.”
“You did, yes.”
She said no more.
Nor did I.
The phone was seldom used at The Grange but that morning I heard her ring up someone from the conservatory.
I stood close to the door and tried hard to listen but the only part of the proceedings I caught was “Saturday night...”
My appointment at the hospital was for 10:30 A.M. but an emergency put the morning’s programme back by about an hour.
During the wait I read a few articles from various magazines, including an interview with an old gardener now aged one hundred who claimed that for getting rid of dandelions there was nothing quite so effective as arsenic, a small quantity of which he always kept in his garden shed.
Was it at this point I began to think of getting rid of Mrs. S-G? Along with the dandelions?
I suppose I’d already pondered the problems likely to face unmarried mums. Problems so often caused by married dads.
What really irks me more than anything, though, is all that sickening spiel they come up with. You know, about not wanting anyone to get hurt. Above all not wanting the little wife to get hurt.
Hypocrites!
It was my turn for receiving letters on the Thursday of the following week. Two of them.
The first was from the hospital. I was fine. The baby was fine. I felt almost happy.
The second was from the father of my child, with the postmark “Los Angeles.”