‘You’re quite disgusting!’ she cried; addressing Roy. ‘Oh, he is vile,’ she said, to me. ‘Did he get gunk all over you?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘God, what a madhouse!’ She set off again, still clutching Roy by his collar. His cowed legs slid and scrabbled over the stone floor. ‘You must be wondering what you’ve let yourself in for!’
We passed the staircase and left the hall through a door to the right. After several twists and turns, and by a manoeuvre about which I was not entirely clear, we entered a large and sunny room which I took to be the kitchen.
‘Let’s get the kettle on, shall we?’ said Pamela, releasing Roy, who skulked off into a corner.
‘All right,’ I said.
‘And then you can tell me everything.’
She left my side and began busying herself at one of the kitchen counters. The whole room was kitted out in old wood, which is why I had been unsure as to whether it was a kitchen at all. A large, old-fashioned stove — the ‘Aga’, as I later came to call it — and a vast wooden dining table were the only clues. Otherwise, it was furnished with the sort of elegant cupboards and dressers which most people put in their formal rooms. I thought I had never seen anything so tasteful.
‘What exactly was it you did?’ said Pamela.
Her grammar, although I am sure it was correct, confused me for a moment.
‘Excuse me?’
‘Before,’ she elaborated. ‘In London.’
‘Oh, I see. I worked for a law firm. As a secretary.’ It proved harder to say than I had thought. ‘This is a lovely kitchen. I’ve never seen one like it.’
‘Thank you!’ Pamela, who during the above exchange had kept her back to me, turned and gave me that same large smile she had given me earlier. It was a remarkably pleasant smile to receive. She turned away again. ‘And had you always done secretarial work? Or was it a stopgap on the way to something else?’
I saw that I had got off lightly with Mr Madden, who had asked me practically nothing about myself.
‘I’ve done various things, but mostly secretarial work. I didn’t mind it,’ I added, attempting to turn the conversation, ‘but I suppose I just got bored. Which is why I’m here.’
Pamela laughed, and I must admit that my reply had been skilful.
‘Well, you certainly won’t be bored here. Exhausted and infuriated perhaps, but never bored. Although’ — her fine shoulders twitched, as though she had been about to turn around, but had thought better of it — ‘if you’re looking for a social life, you might be out of luck. There’s the village, for what it’s worth, and Buckley isn’t far, but we’re definitely rather short on nightlife around here.’
I took this as a subtle warning and responded appropriately.
‘I won’t mind that,’ I said. ‘One of the reasons I wanted to leave London in the first place was to get away from all of that.’
‘And what about boyfriends?’ she continued; quite pleasantly, but still with her back to me, which added to my feeling of being, albeit subtly, interrogated. For the second time — my account of my inglorious secretarial career had been the first — I had the dizzying sense of chasms of treachery yawning open behind me, forbidding retraction. With every step I took on this vertiginous journey, the possibility of going back grew more remote. There was, of course, a feeling of great liberty aroused by the act of severing oneself from the past; but having stripped myself of so much, I had a panicked sense of my own nakedness and the indignities to which it exposed me.
‘I’m not seeing anyone at the moment,’ I said, and I think I sounded rather unhappy about it.
‘Well, we’ll soon see about that,’ said Pamela, turning around. She had a large teapot in her hands, which she proceeded to bear to the table. ‘Let’s see if we can’t find a nice rich farmer for you.’ She laughed, loudly and spontaneously. I felt I had no choice but to join in. ‘You must be thinking, what’s the old bat on about now? My children are always telling me that I’m far too interfering, but I can’t seem to help it. I just can’t bear to think of lovely young people going to waste.’
‘It isn’t always a waste,’ I said, quite sharply. I had realized by now that it was sink or swim with Pamela. ‘Some people just prefer to be on their own.’
‘Do they?’ implored Pamela, bringing her eyes — which were an unusual light grey colour, and rather small — to meet mine. We were both seated at the table by this time, the teapot between us. ‘Or do they only say they do, because there isn’t anybody on the scene?’
‘Perhaps a bit of both,’ I said politely.
At that moment Mr Madden entered the room. I was very pleased to see him, concerned as I was that the conversation was straying into deep water. Unfortunately, my pleasure must have announced itself too boldly in my face; for I felt Pamela’s eyes prick me from across the table.
‘Darling!’ she said, smile aloft. ‘Is everything shipshape? I’ve been quizzing poor Stella dreadfully, so she’s probably very relieved that you’ve come to rescue her.’
Mr Madden looked from one to the other of us and back again, an expression of bright vacancy on his rosy face. His response is hard for me to capture, being a sort of grunt or whinny — ‘brrr!’ would best describe it — which I soon learned was his habitual reaction to Pamela’s episodes of sharpness. I myself was mortified by her comment, which penetrated my ears and exited through my cheeks in a matter of seconds with a furious blush.
‘Is that tea?’ said Mr Madden, nodding at the teapot.
‘There’s plenty left. Go and get yourself a cup,’ said Pamela.
‘I’ll get it!’ I interjected, leaping from my chair; Heaven only knows why. It was a sort of reflex action, I suppose. I had begun to feel uncomfortable with my situation, not because it was particularly unpleasant; on the contrary, it was far more pleasant than I had imagined my welcome would be — I had wondered, for example, if I might be put to work immediately on arrival — although of course there is no reason why I should have been able to imagine it accurately. What did I know of the Maddens and their kind? No, by leaping up in that unexpected manner, I was attempting to place myself in the menial role which must, in one way or another, be assigned to me before much more time passed. I suspected, moreover, that when Mr Madden had mentioned tea Pamela had considered asking me to fetch the cup herself. I have a keen instinct for this type of nuance; and even at this early stage had become alerted to the presence of a certain caprice in Pamela’s nature, which suggested that she might not consider the precise articulation of her commands to have undue effect on their speedy and correct enaction.
‘That’s very kind!’ she said approvingly.
‘Don’t be silly,’ said Mr Madden. ‘I’ll get it myself.’
‘She may as well learn where things are kept,’ said Pamela meaningfully, fixing him where he stood with her eyes. ‘She’ll feel more at home once she knows her way around.’
‘I’m quite happy to do it,’ I said, anxious that my offer was becoming tarnished in this tug-of-war. ‘Just tell me where you keep the cups.’
‘In the cupboard directly in front of you,’ said Pamela. ‘That’s the one! That’s right.’
I opened the cupboard and there indeed were the cups; not, incidentally, aligned in orderly rows, but stacked in a jumble of conflicting shapes and patterns. I selected one painted a cheerful red.
‘Thomas been yet?’ said Mr Madden behind me. ‘I want to tell him about that gate. Bloody nuisance.’
‘He telephoned earlier. He’s had to drive his wife to the dentist.’ Pamela laughed, and began to speak in a voluble country brogue. ‘Mrs Ma-adde? The wife’s been taken poorly with ‘er tooth. She’s in tumble pain.’