‘He won’t need help. He just needs to be told to do it.’
‘OK,’ I said. ‘I’ll do that. And what about when he’s at the centre? I mean, what do you expect me to do?’
‘Well!’ Pamela gave a sort of snort. ‘Obviously I can’t give you a timetable for every spare minute. Personally, I find that I barely have time to catch my breath, but if you think that you’re going to be at a loose end then I suppose you can come and find me and I’ll give you something to do,’
‘Fine,’ I said; and regretted it as soon as I heard the unfortunate way in which it had issued from my mouth. I suppose that I had been feeling quite cross at the way Pamela was speaking to me, and some of this resentment had exited inadvertently with my reply. It was impossible that Pamela should not have noticed my tone, and indeed her head shot up at the sound of it and she met me with a steely eye. In her expression, I could see dawning the memory of our exchange in this very kitchen the other night; a sight which surprised me, for I had of course imagined that she had thought a great deal about the scene and made certain resolutions concerning it. It was now apparent to me that she had not given it a moment’s consideration; until now.
‘I hope we’re not going to have trouble with you,’ she said; not particularly nastily, although it was not a very pleasant thing to say. ‘We’ve had problems with girls in the past, and we were very much hoping that you were going to be different.’
It was difficult for me to restrain myself from remarking that the ‘problems’ encountered in the past all had one thing in common — Pamela — and that perhaps she should look to herself if she wanted to solve them. This kind of honesty was not available to me. Still, I could see that Pamela’s ill temper, rather than a unique occurrence, was to be a central feature of my dealings with her; a fact which demanded, risky and unpleasant though this prospect was, the immediate formulation of some policy with which to confront it.
‘Mrs Madden,’ I said boldly. ‘I’m sorry if you’ve had problems in the past. I don’t intend to cause you any trouble, and I very much want things to work out well. This kind of life is very new to me, however, and if you remember that this is only my first proper day, then you will understand why I might need my duties to be spelled out for me clearly. It’s obviously very important that things go smoothly with Martin,’ I continued; ingeniously, I must admit. ‘And I don’t want to learn by making mistakes. I’d rather know everything I have to know before we start, and that way he will hopefully not be too disrupted.’
This speech was exhausting; and as I delivered it I trembled at what Pamela might be thinking of me. It was impossible to deduce anything from her expression, which was one of openmouthed astonishment. She seemed to be thinking. Finally, to my relief, she began to nod her head energetically.
‘Yes. Yes,’ she said. ‘I think I see what you mean. Yes, you’re quite right, Stella.’ She was still nodding. I wondered when she would stop. ‘Yes, it is better this way, isn’t it?’
‘I think so,’ I said, quite warmly; although I was still panting from my oratory. ‘Now,’ I continued, pressing my advantage, ‘shall I take Mrs Barker her coffee? And then perhaps I can go and find Martin and see what he’s doing about that homework.’
‘Yes, why don’t you?’ said Pamela meekly.
‘Where will I find him?’
‘What? Oh, upstairs in his bedroom, I should think. Mrs Barker will show you the way if you get lost.’
You may be surprised by this evidence of my assertiveness. Perhaps you have assumed that because I was inferior to Mrs Madden — in many ways, and not only because of my position in her house — that I would never find it within myself to stand up to her. My story so far could be regarded, indeed, as a history of oppression, one of those old-fashioned stories in which a poor, plain heroine endures all the misfortunes that social and material disadvantage can devise for her, but lives to be triumphantly rewarded at the last moment for her forbearance. Mrs Madden, for example, might finally meet with a terrible accident, falling beneath the wheels of a tractor or being murdered by Mrs Barker, who would be revealed to be an anarchist working under cover; leaving me to be installed at Franchise Farm as Pamela’s successor, Mr Madden having confessed that he hated her all along. I will not pretend that I myself have never entertained daydreams of this type; but one’s first duty must always be to reality.
To return to the subject of my unexpected act of self-assertion, I had been in the world; and in the course of my twenty-nine years had encountered all manner of people there. I am not stupid; and as I watched Pamela work herself into a fever of ill temper for the second time was able to observe the phenomenon more closely. I did not do this entirely consciously, of course; I am a sensitive person, and in situations of confrontation find it easier to be emotional than scientific. Let us just say that I was not so disconcerted by Pamela on this occasion; and by remaining calm, that I was able to detect several similarities in the two outbursts which pointed at some kind of pathology on the part of my employer. In order to conduct this experiment, I had, obviously, to be sure that my own position was of the utmost rationality; and I believed that it was. Having established, then, that Pamela had no specific cause to be angry at me, I could deduce that the source of her irritation lay elsewhere. Who, indeed, could blame Pamela for being touchy? No matter how much she appeared to dote upon Martin, to have a disabled child is to carry one of life’s heavier burdens. Among the feelings which it might provoke, I could identify guilt and resentment in a matter of moments; and who knew what else might be found if one dug deeper?
The second strand of my analysis of Pamela’s instability involved separating the reality of Pamela’s situation from the manner in which she represented it. I had noticed the frequency with which she resorted to dramatic and exaggerated terminology in general; and to expressions of chaos and overwork in particular. Pamela, according to herself, was busy every minute of the day; the house was a ‘madhouse’; she was left with no time even to ‘catch her breath’. This, as far as I could see, was far from actually being the case. What, in fact, did Pamela have to do? She had Mrs Barker; she had me. Even Martin, whose helplessness was the cause of my presence here, seemed fairly self-reliant, with his homework and aptitude for shuffling and going to the lavatory alone. When I asked for specific assignments for the afternoons when Martin was absent, Pamela could give me none; and this, being the school holidays, was high season as far as looking after Martin was concerned. What was I supposed to do all day when Martin went back to school? The next question, though cruel, was unavoidable: why couldn’t Pamela manage on her own?
In this way, I arrived at the conclusion that Pamela was not the self-possessed and frightening person she seemed. It was this realization that permitted me to stand up to her; but in finding the solution to one of my problems, I created many more. Having discovered Pamela’s weakness, I was in a sense electing to carry it, and I had come to the country with the express purpose of avoiding burdens of this type. I did not want to be embroiled in complexity; and it was hard to see how I could continue to use a ‘firm hand’ with Pamela — for that, I now knew, was the way to tame her — without assuming some responsibility for the consequences. Pamela was unhappy. Should I remain the slave of this unhappiness, and continue to endure the more unfortunate aspects of her treatment of me without complaint, I would, I felt sure, suffer every torment the despotic nature can visit upon the submissive. Things would go from bad to worse. Were I, however, to become its master, I would be accepting a certain amount of power; and with power comes accountability. In other words, if I assumed control of my relationship with Pamela, she would eventually come to expect certain things of me which I was not sure I wanted to provide.