One Pair of Hands Read online

  ‘Do you mean orders?’

  ‘Yesh, mish.’

  ‘Well, I don’t really know yet –’

  ‘O.K., Mish, I’ll do the other flats firsht and call back.’

  ‘All right.’

  He went on up the outside stairs whistling, and I rushed to the bedroom, wiping my hands on my overall before going in.

  ‘Good morning, Monica, I hope you’re getting on all right.’

  Just as I thought, very expensive-looking pink satin and lace –

  ‘Yes, thank you – madam.’ I’d been practising this at home, but it still sounded a little self-conscious. After much deliberation I’d chosen it in preference to ma’am or ’m, or even madarm, which is popular in some basement circles.

  ‘I just want to talk about food. Have you got a pencil and paper?’ I went back to the kitchen for it, and there was the milkman jangling outside the door. I had to rush back to the bedroom, ask ‘How much milk?’ rush back to the kitchen, receive a bottle, look for the little book to check it in, and then rush back to the bedroom to take up the threads. By the time I’d got there a man wanted to be let in to read the meter.

  This incessant conflict between the summonses of upper and lower regions is one of the most annoying things about domestic service. One gets used to it in time, but it is always a bit of a strain on the nerves.

  Eventually we got down to the food question. ‘I shall be out to lunch,’ she said, ‘but there’s a gentleman coming to dinner. Perhaps you could suggest something nice?’ All cooks’ minds are a hopeless blank when confronted with this question, and mine was no exception. She laughed, realizing this, and I liked her. She looked very gay when she laughed, and much more friendly.

  I daringly suggested a mushroom soufflé to start with. It was a bit of a risk as I’d only made one once at the cookery school, but she was delighted. Evidently Mrs Baker’s cooking hadn’t run to much more than plain things, which was a help, as it meant less chance of unfavourable comparison between us. We fixed the other courses, and I rushed back to the kitchen as I could hear that the ‘Grosher’ was back again. I polished him off, and after that dealt in rapid succession with various butchers, fishmongers, greengrocers, etc., not to mention a small boy with a huge hat-box. A few original and pungent remarks about the weather had to be exchanged with each.

  I’d never realized what a sociable lot of back-door traffic there is, especially in a house where the mistress doesn’t order the things at the shops herself. It adds a great deal of amusement to life, but it is a little harrying when one is trying to do thousands of other things at the same time.

  The telephone rang while Miss Faulkener was in the bath, so I had to go into the bedroom and answer it. When I picked it up and said, ‘Hullo!’ a voice at the other end surprised me with:

  ‘Good morning, darling sweet.’

  ‘This is Miss Faulkener’s maid,’ I said reprovingly.

  ‘Oh, Lord! That’s not Mrs Baker, surely?’

  ‘No sir, Mrs Baker left and I have taken her place.’

  ‘Well, I hope your cooking’s as nice as your voice.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ I thought him a trifle impertinent, but I must remember my place.

  ‘Well, it couldn’t be worse than Mrs B’s.’

  At this point my mistress drifted in from the bathroom in a cloud of perfume and a pink satin dressing-gown, and wondered what I was conversing about.

  ‘Someone for me?’

  ‘Yes, madam. Here is Miss Faulkener to speak to you now, sir.’

  I put down the receiver, and went out of the room as she picked it up with a ‘Really, darling, must you always ring up when I’m in the bath?’

  Her ‘best boy’ evidently, as we say below stairs. I wondered if it was he who was coming to dinner.

  I had to do the bathroom now, and was delighted to see that she was not one of those people who leave the place in a sickening mess – with cigarette ends and hairs all over everything.

  She had lots of scented things to put in the bath, and I approved of her toothpaste. Her sponge was not greasy and sticky from long use, and I liked her even more – I crashed around among the bottles and things with a cloth and wiped the bath.

  I kept my eyes severely turned away from one piece of furniture lest it should remind me that it was my duty to clean it or something. I struck at that.

  Miss Faulkener went out soon, looking smart in black, with a lovely fur coat, so I made her bed, and spent an intriguing ten minutes among her personal effects. The Voice on the Telephone stood on the dressing-table seen from two aspects, in one of those double-folding frames. I studied him carefully and found him rather attractive in a military-looking way, though I should have liked him a bit younger. I wasn’t sure about the moustache, it was a little too long and looked as if he curled it while he talked. However, the egg without salt, perhaps.

  Her clothes were lovely and plentiful, and her dressing-table held a comprehensive selection of the make-up of one of the expensive firms. By the time I’d done her room and opened the door to one or two errand boys I was beginning to feel hungry, and saw with surprise that it was nearly one o’clock. I was amazed at the speed with which time goes when you’re working. I thought of the many mornings that I’d spent doing things just to pass the time until lunch, and felt incredibly diligent.

  In the afternoon I had to polish the parquet.

  I took up all the rugs and moved the furniture back – putting the wax polish on the floor was rather wearing on the knees and stockings, and I began to see that I should have to abandon my principles and wear lisle thread. After that I walked about a mile pushing a broom with a duster tied round it, and it really was most pleasant to see how it polished. I had to keep kneeling down and looking sideways along the floor to see how the sheen was coming up. There was a large area of parquet and it was four o’clock before I’d finished, so I put back the furniture, changed my filthy overalls to a fancy little apron, and made myself a cup of Mrs Baker’s black brew.

  I was glad to see that Miss Faulkener took the one daily paper that is read in nearly every kitchen all over England. I was able to ‘take the weight off me feet’ for quite ten minutes, while engrossed in the amusement both intentional and unconscious that it provides, before my mistress arrived demanding tea. I was glad when she revealed some China tea in a tin, because I didn’t think the rank black weeds that I had been drinking would suit my constitution for long.

  She lit the fire in the drawing-room and I had to persuade her that it was the peculiar direction of the wind and not my inexpert laying that made it belch forth smoke instead of crackling flames. It started to go out altogether, though I knelt in front of it for some time, despairingly holding up a sheet of newspaper with no effect. However, while she was in her bedroom I took the opportunity of getting some methylated spirits from the kitchen and pouring it liberally over the coals. Bravely I threw on a match, and by the time she came back it was crackling away beautifully. She regarded the blue flames a bit suspiciously but said nothing, so I went back to the kitchen to start cooking the dinner. I wasn’t going to have a repetition of the Cattermole episode, so I started in good time and tried to figure things out into some sort of order. It was quite a simple dinner, anyway, and she had told me not to put the soufflé in till ‘Major Nixon’ (yes, that sounded like the moustached one) arrived. They would drink their sherry while it was cooking. I appreciated the fact that she realized that a soufflé must be waited for and not kept waiting. Miss Faulkener put on a long pale green dinner dress and seemed to be excited. She walked about from room to room, putting on fresh dabs of scent, patting her hair, and puffing up the cushions on the sofa.

  As the place was small, the kitchen was not hidden away from the goings-on in the rest of the flat, and I got quite infected with her excitement and felt a thrill myself when the front bell rang.

  I took off my cooking apron, and had a look in the glass before flinging open the front door in my best
parlour-maid manner.

  Yes, it was Moustaches all right, and not bad at that, though his scrutiny of me as I took his hat and coat was a little too intimate. I didn’t quite know how to behave. It is rather difficult to be dignified when clad in a short skirt and frilly collar and apron, so I rather hustled him into the drawing-room. His back view was marred by the glimmerings of a bald patch. My soufflé was much more fascinating anyway, so I hurried back to the kitchen, and my prayers went with it into the oven. Then I laid the table, lit four green candles, and turned out the lights. The air was pregnant with romance.

  Much to my surprise the soufflé rose like a bird. When it was nearly cooked I went along to the drawing-room and hung about outside for a bit, saying, ‘Dinner is served! Dinner is ready!’ to myself to see which sounded best. I finally decided that ‘Dinner is served!’ can only be done justice to by butlers and the sort of parlour-maids who are called by their surnames.

  I said my piece in the intimate manner demanded by the tête-à-tête occasion, wrapped a napkin round my soufflé, and it was still standing up when I thrust it proudly under Miss Faulkener’s nose. I watched anxiously to see how it looked inside, bravely suffering agonies on the hands, as it hadn’t occurred to me to put a plate under the dish. She delved delicately in, and revealed it to be miraculously light. Little did she know that it was luck and not judgement that made it so, and she was thrilled, thinking that she had found a really good cook.

  The rest of the dinner seemed to go off all right too, though after a time, with wine flowing pretty freely, they were so delighted with each other that anything would have tasted ambrosial.

  They were sitting quite close together at the oval table and there was some funny business going on, because I got a hack on the ankle as I came between them to hand him the savoury. I gave them coffee on the sofa in the other half of the room, and, leaving the moustache fairly bristling with anticipation, returned to the disheartening wreckage of the kitchen.

  It didn’t occur to me in those days to wash up as I went along, not that I would have had time, as cooking took me quite twice as long as it should. I kept doing things wrong and having to rush to cookery books for help, and everything I wanted at a moment’s notice had always disappeared. I had hunted round for ages for a wooden spoon, to find it eventually balanced on top of the clock, where I had put it in a moment of abstraction due to a minor crisis. Two minutes later it had gone again, and this time it didn’t turn up till the porter of the flats was emptying the dustbin a week later, and asked me if I meant to throw away a perfectly good spoon.

  Every saucepan in the place was dirty; the sink was piled high with them. On the floor lay the plates and dishes that couldn’t be squeezed on to the table or dresser, already cluttered up with peelings, pudding basins, and dirty little bits of butter.

  I didn’t feel like eating anything; tasting and picking at oddments as I went along had made me feel rather sick, so I had some coffee, trod on a plate, and started listlessly on the washing-up. The rush and excitement of cooking the dinner, serving it, and watching the progress of l’amour had kept me keyed up and energetic. Now that I was alone with the sordid aftermath I suddenly realized how tired I was and that, in the words of the Cattermole cook, ‘Me feet were drawing.’

  At eleven o’clock I was still at it and my back and head were aching in unison. The washing-up was finished, but the stove was in a hideous mess, and I had got to that stage when one’s tired nerves make one feel almost superstitious about anything left undone. I felt I should be run over on the way home or something if I left it dirty till the morning.

  Miss Faulkener came in to get some glasses as I was plying the Vim tin and was horrified to see me still there. ‘Goodness, Monica, I thought you’d gone hours ago. Run off now, anyway; you can leave that till tomorrow.’

  ‘Thank you, madam, but I think I’d rather get it done now.’

  ‘Well, just as you like, of course, but if it was me –’

  She wafted back to the drawing-room and I thought: ‘If it was you, you’d be thinking of how depressing it will be tomorrow morning to arrive at crack of dawn and find things filthy. People may think that by telling you to leave a thing till the next day it will get done magically, all by itself overnight. But no, that is not so, in fact quite the reverse, in all probability it will become a mess of an even greater magnitude.’ Exhaustion was making my brain think pedantically. It formed momentous beautifully rounded phrases that meant nothing, as I slaved away automatically. At last I had finished, and, resolutely turning my back on a large spot of grease on the floor, I was washing my hands preparatory to leaving when the pair of them arrived in the kitchen to speed me on my way. Was it my fancy, or did I detect a distinct impatience to be rid of me and have the flat to themselves?

  It was, undoubtedly, just normal solicitude for my welfare that made them fairly hustle me out of the front door. I fell into the lift and out again, and propped myself against a lamp-post till my bus arrived. I arrived home in a sort of coma, and if the family were expecting to be regaled with anecdotes of my first day’s work they were disappointed. My mother helped me to undress and brought me hot milk, and as I burrowed into the yielding familiarity of my own dear bed, my last thought was thankfulness that I was a ‘Daily’ and not a ‘Liver in’.

  Chapter Three

  AFTER A WEEK or two at Miss Faulkener’s I was beginning to get a bit more efficient, and, therefore, less tired. I was still pretty exhausted by the end of the evening, and it sent me into such an immediate and deep slumber that I felt quite fresh again by the time the alarm clock lifted its voice. I liked the familiarity of my little kitchen and the cooking gave me enormous pleasure. I wasn’t so keen on the housework part – though I liked polishing the parquet. I devoted most of my time to it, and it shone with a rare blue gleam. Unfortunately it didn’t take Miss Faulkener’s attention off other things. Mrs Baker had been right about the finger along the shelves. Life was a wordless and unacknowledged battle of wits between us, with her keeping a sharp look-out for signs of dirt and neglect, and me trying to disguise my slovenliness by subterfuge.

  I became an adept at sweeping dust under the bed, and always used the same few pieces of silver, so that I didn’t have to keep polishing the rest. Sometimes, if she was in the room while I was making the bed, she would say:

  ‘How about turning the mattress?’ She didn’t seem to get suspicious of my always answering: ‘I turned it only yesterday madam,’ so somehow I don’t think the thing was turned all the time I was there. It was much too heavy, anyway.

  If she was in the mood she would chat to me very amusingly. My conversation, naturally, was limited, as it had to be discreetly deferential, and I couldn’t start talking unless she did, or stay in a room after she had finished what she wanted to say.

  A maid makes a good defenceless listener for people who want to talk about themselves and not be answered back.

  Any repression this may have caused me to feel was fully made up for by the social whirl of the back door. I was getting to know all the tradesmen so well that I felt as if I had been in the place for years. The milkman, who suspected his wife of carrying on with a travelling salesman, often dropped in for a cup of tea and a bit of advice on how to treat women, but my real pal was the ‘Grosher’. He was a pools maniac, and he got me so infected with his enthusiasm that, with his assistance, I took it up.

  His was the first finger every morning to give me the nerve storm still produced by that dreadful bell. I would give him the orders first, before I forgot, and then we would get down to the more important business of selection, interrupted here and there by reminiscences of his pools experiences.

  ‘When I won shixteen poundsh by a lucky shot with me four awaysh’ was an anecdote I never got tired of hearing, or he of telling. Despite the fact that it was two years ago, and he hadn’t won a penny since, we were not disheartened. Thursday mornings, when he helped me to fill in my form, were grim and earnest affairs, i
nvolving much heavy breathing and licking of a short stump of pencil.

  ‘Arshenal, Mish? Never touch ’em meshelf. Chelshea neither, for that matter – too variable. Put a cross in ’ere – sho, heresh away win – sho,’ as we put in the last mystic sign. ‘That ought to bring us home thish week. Gawd shave us if that new centre forward isn’t worth his prysh money.’

  Monday morning found us slightly damped but not discouraged, and we would discuss with undaunted optimism the new week’s chances. Dear ‘Grosher’! I wonder whether he has ever repeated his historic success. I gave up the pools when I went elsewhere, as I couldn’t do them without him. Whenever football is mentioned I think of bicycling clips; it keeps his memory green.

  Miss Faulkener seemed to have a great many friends, and she often went to lunch and cocktail parties. Her evenings were mostly dedicated to Major Nixon. When he didn’t come to dinner at the flat they would go out together – she very gay with orchids and glamorously scented.

  I was becoming such a familiar piece of furniture about the place by this time that they didn’t always bother to address their remarks in French when I was in the room.

  One day, while I was handing them some rather choice grilled kidneys, she said: ‘Darling, I think we ought to give a cocktail party.’

  ‘Why, my sweet, we don’t want a whole lot of frightful people all over the place.’

  ‘No, but I think we ought. I owe a lot of people, and it would be rather fun. Monica could make us some attractive things to eat, couldn’t you, Monica?’

  ‘Certainly, madam.’

  ‘Let’s fix a date.’

  ‘Must we, darling? I tell you I don’t like the idea of people barging around our dear little flat – I like to have you to myself here.’

  He laid a tender hand on her arm.