Читать книгу The Rose Garden - Maeve Brennan - Страница 10
ОглавлениеTom and Liza Frye had an eighteenth-century brick house, painted white and filled with severely modern furniture, and two Jaguar cars, a white one for Liza and a black one for Tom. Both cars had governors on them so they could not do more than fifty-five miles an hour, for Tom and Liza did not believe in speed. They each had a flat gold cigarette case and a short gold holder, and their cigarettes were made specially for them. At night they slept in matching white silk pajamas. Their bed, wide and low, was as big as a small field. Actually, it wasn’t a double bed at all but twin beds locked together by the legs and made up with separate sets of sheets. The sheets, like the pajamas, were fresh every night. One of Liza’s favorite words was “immaculate.” The word she liked least in the language was “appetite.” Still, it was a word she often used. “I have no appetite for anything,” she would say, or sometimes, “I don’t believe in appetites. They’re so common.”
Liza was tall and excessively thin, with long, beautiful legs. She was proud of her figure, and preserved it by eating almost nothing. During the day, she fasted, and at night she dined, with Tom, on cottage cheese and shredded carrot. Their dinner was served on a tray in their bedroom, which was immense and possessed of, and by, a tremendous picture window that allowed a magnificent view of the Hudson River. Their house was built on the edge of the river, and their living room, directly under the bedroom, also had a gigantic picture window and a handsome view. Liza disliked having the living room disturbed, and Tom didn’t mind dining in the bedroom. His real life was spent away from home anyway, and by evening he was usually too tired to want anything except sleep. Liza had pale-gold hair that she wore in a neat, caplike arrangement. Tom, a little shorter than she, was stout, and had a fat, glum face and large, suspicious blue eyes. He was suspicious because of his money, of which he had a great deal. Although it was safely stowed away in a trust fund, he lived in constant fear that someone would take it from him. Liza had had no money at all until she married Tom. She was thirty-nine, two years older than he. They had been married almost seven years.
They lived at Herbert’s Retreat, an exclusive community of about forty houses on the east bank of the Hudson, thirty miles above New York City. It had been Liza’s decision to move to the Retreat. Tom had been inclined to stay on in his comfortable, velvet-hung apartment on Beekman Place, but Liza insisted on having her own way. Liza felt, and often said, that the only way to impress one’s personality on people is to deprive them of something they want. Shake them up. Make them see that what they have isn’t much. It was hard to do this in New York, where people had so many distractions, but at Herbert’s Retreat, that tightly locked, closely guarded little community, Liza made a strong impression. Right off, her modern furniture outraged all the other women, who had been concentrating on Early American. Liza called the furniture at the Retreat “country.” “Country furniture is sweet,” she said, “but it’s so sheeplike.” In the same way, she refused to share the other women’s enthusiasm for gardening. The narrow strip of ground that surrounded her house on three sides—the fourth side being almost one with the river—was given over to fine white gravel, which was raked and rolled every week by the Retreat gardener. When her neighbors chattered about their bulbs and seeds, Liza enjoyed saying, “I don’t approve of flowers, except in their proper place. They certainly don’t belong in the ground.” Her own cut flowers, always white, were delivered twice a week from a nearby greenhouse by a girl who arranged the new flowers and took the old ones away with her.
Liza was a rigid housekeeper. Her furniture had all been designed for her, and she hated to see anything out of its appointed place. Her mother, Mrs. Conroy, who lived with her, had been begging for years for an old-fashioned cozy armchair, but Liza was adamant. Liza and Mrs. Conroy detested each other, but it suited them to live together—Liza because she enjoyed showing her power, and Mrs. Conroy because she was waiting for her day of vengeance. They were alike in their admiration for Tom’s money, but Mrs. Conroy felt she should have more say in the spending of it. The old lady’s only treasured possession was a set of nineteen shabby account books, records painstakingly kept by her dead husband, who had run a small stationery shop in Brooklyn. The account books read like a diary to Mrs. Conroy, who liked to pore over them when she was tired of counting up her grievances. Liza allowed her mother to keep the books so that she could threaten to deprive her of them. She had a special set of shelves built for them in her mother’s bedroom, with sliding panels that concealed their ragged backs from view and that were kept locked, the key being retained by Mrs. Conroy, who never let it out of her reach. When her mother became obstreperous, Liza would threaten to have the books destroyed, and the old woman always knuckled under.
“I’m just a poor, forsaken old woman,” she would wail in a tone of false anguish that hid rage.
“You’re an invalid,” Liza would say firmly, and if her mother was not already in her bedroom, she would be taken by the arm and conducted there.
Liza preferred to believe that her mother was an invalid. The fact was that the old lady was as strong as a horse, but Liza maintained that her mother had a delicate stomach and could eat only bland foods. Liza had discovered a preparation, quite expensive, that contained all the vitamins necessary to keep an old woman alive and healthy without putting any weight on her. This food, stirred into a bowl of skim milk, was what Mrs. Conroy got three times a day. It was delicious, with a vague flavor of vichyssoise. Sometimes Liza even took a dish of it herself. But Mrs. Conroy was tired of it. She continued to wolf it down, though, because she was by nature greedy. Liza, with memories of vegetable marrow, turnip, and porridge being squashed into her own rebellious mouth, enjoyed seeing her mother swallow this pap. My turn has come, she thought, congratulating herself on her life in general, because she had been sick with lack of money when she married Tom, having gone all her life without the things she felt were her due. It was not the things she enjoyed, however; it was the position they gave her. She loved the Retreat. She never left it, even for a night.
Once, years before, when she was only a poor, lovely-looking girl in a flower shop, she had come to the Retreat for a weekend. The assured, amused attitude of the women there, and their indifference to her, infuriated her. She went away hating them. After her marriage to Tom, she had come back determined to make them sit up and take notice of her. She didn’t want to become one of them, she told herself. What she wanted was to keep them from being too pleased with themselves.
Tom, on the other hand, found the center of his existence in New York. His days were spent sitting in a window in his club there. This club, a massive, majestic building on upper Fifth Avenue, had been in Tom’s heart since the day in his eighth year when his grandfather had brusquely interrupted a peaceful afternoon at home to rush him there in a taxicab. Tom, at eight, was already accustomed to being taken into splendid establishments, and he waited confidently for his grandfather to conduct him up the broad stone steps and through the great iron door, where respectful servants would bow and take their hats and coats. But his grandfather, instead of going forward, grabbed him by the hand and proceeded around to the side of the building, which overlooked a narrow, luxurious street. There on the sidewalk, the old man stood beside his grandson and glared up at the second-floor windows, three of them, each framing a seated, apparently lifeless man. Heavy curtains hung about the windows, and the room within was lighted, but not brightly. It was a towering room. Tom could glimpse the dark, carved, curving ceiling and part of a glimmering chandelier. The men in the windows appeared very old to him, but perhaps they were only elderly. Two of them seemed to be drowsing. The third, a thin-faced, upright man with silver hair, stared icily into the street. Tom’s grandfather raised his stick and pointed upward in choler. “There he is,” he growled. “There’s the rascal who did me out of my rights. This is the only club in New York I’m not admitted to, thanks to him. He’s responsible. He got them to turn me down.” Turning his gaze on Tom, he shouted, “And you’ll never get in there, either, you little rat.” Tom loathed his grandfather, a self-made man who loved his grandson because he was his grandson but despised him because he was a rich little boy. When the old man was in a good humor, he liked to take Tom on his knobby knees and grin balefully into his plump, gloomy little face. “And what are you thinking now, dirty little boy?” he would whisper, and then, with a bellow of glee, he would part his knees and tumble his dejected burden rudely to the floor.
Years later, Tom’s father became a member of the club his grandfather had been kept out of, and at twenty-one Tom, too, was admitted. The thin-faced old man Tom’s grandfather had pointed out to him no longer sat in the second-story window. Tom quickly appropriated his chair. He felt timid about doing this, but to his astonishment no one else seemed to want it. The elderly men and the middle-aged men had been seduced away, first by the club movie room and then by the new television room, and the younger men darted in and out, having no patience for anything. Tom felt with disappointment that club life had lost its grandeur. There was a rowdiness, unheard but felt, that Tom was sure was not consistent with gentlemanliness. He struck up no friendships with his fellow-members.
Tom arrived at the club every day at ten o’clock. In the mornings, he sat in the chair by the window, reading the papers. At twelve-thirty, he made his way to the dining room and enjoyed a two-hour lunch, always eating alone, always at the same table. All the imagination and appreciation he was capable of were spent at the luncheon table. In the afternoons, he simply sat and watched the street. At five o’clock, he sent for his car, quartered at a nearby garage, and drove home to Liza.
Early one October, Liza received a telephone call that disturbed her very much. The call was from Clara Longacre, who invited her to drop over for bridge the same afternoon. Clara, at thirty, was the recognized social leader at the Retreat—merely because, Liza often thought viciously, of having grown up there. Clara’s natural sense of superiority made it impossible for her to doubt herself. She knew she was better than anybody else. She was untouchable. Liza longed more than anything in the world to impress Clara, to deprive her, even if it was only for a minute, of her eternal self-satisfaction. Sometimes she lay awake in bed and gritted her teeth in the struggle to bring forth some scheme that would crack that natural armor. Now she was not disturbed at the invitation to bridge; she had often been to bridge at Clara’s house. It was the tone of the invitation that had unsettled her. Always before, in speaking to her, Clara’s manner and her amused tone of voice had implied an awareness that Liza was a person—a possible adversary, even. This time, she was merely casual, as if she had forgotten that Liza was in any way different from the others. Liza wondered distractedly if perhaps they were all beginning to take her for granted. After all, she had done nothing extraordinary for a year—not since she had torn out the whole riverside wall of her house to install those two outsize picture windows. At night, from the opposite bank of the river, her house appeared to be a glittering sheet of white light—the most spectacular establishment in the community, whether you admired it or not. Even that, which had outraged all the rest of them (they said that, like her furniture, it was alien to the spirit of Herbert’s Retreat), had drawn only an amused smile from Clara. Liza had always felt that Clara’s amusement might mask a touch of chagrin, enough to make a small victory for herself. This time Clara’s voice had been casual and friendly, but that was all. I will not be patronized by her, Liza thought wildly. I must show her.
She went to the bridge party in a scattered, anxious frame of mind. Clara had also asked Arabelle Burton and Margaret Slade. They all come running when Clara rings the bell, Liza thought.
As they were adding up their scores at the end of the afternoon, Clara asked, “Aren’t you and Tom having an anniversary soon, Liza?”
“Not till February,” Liza said.
“I know it’s February,” Clara said. “How could any of us forget the month of your arrival, Liza? We had all just settled down after Christmas when you charged in to rouse us out of our lethargy. How many years is it?”
“Seven,” Liza said, and wondered if Clara was laughing at her secretly. They don’t dare laugh at me to my face, she thought. I’m too quick for them.
“Seven is a very special anniversary in most marriages, isn’t it?” Margaret Slade said indistinctly. As usual, she had a cold in her head. “I mean isn’t it the most crucial year after the first, or something?”
“Is it?” Clara said. “Look, Liza, I’d like to give a party for you on your anniversary. Seven years is a long time. We should have a celebration. Will you let me?” She sounded perfectly sincere, and friendly, and Liza stared at her, baffled, not knowing what to say. Surely Clara was being patronizing?
“That’s a wonderful idea—a seventh-anniversary party for Liza!” Margaret Slade cried. “We’ll all bring appropriate presents. What is the seventh anniversary, anyway? Arabelle, you always know about things like that. What’s the seventh anniversary—leather? paper?”
“Brass and copper,” Arabelle said.
“Well, then, that’s settled,” Clara said. “It’s a brass-and-copper party. That should be easy enough, but I’m afraid you’re going to find yourself with a lot of ashtrays and hand bells.”
“You’ll have to tell us what you’d really like, Liza,” Arabelle said. “Your house is so special I’m afraid anything I’d pick out would be an anachronism.”
“Don’t worry about that, Arabelle,” Margaret said, blowing her nose heartily. “We’re all in the same boat there. It would be hard not to bring an anachronism into Liza’s house. We’ll probably end up settling for the least anachronistic thing we can find, and hope for the best.”
“Why not bring the most anachronistic thing we can find?” Clara said. “An anachronism party would be much more fun than just sticking to brass or copper. Liza, I think I’ll give you a cobbler’s bench.”
“Oh, that’s marvelous!” Margaret cried. “I’ll bring a kerosene lamp.”
“I’ll bring a mustache cup,” Arabelle said.
Liza smiled stiffly. They were baiting her. They had never dared make fun of her before. Trembling, she decided to meet their challenge.
“You must have read my mind, Clara,” she said quickly. “As a matter of fact, Tom and I were laughing about anachronisms only the other night. As Tom said, a seventh anniversary is something of an anachronism anyway. The anachronistic lucky seven, and so on. So we decided to celebrate the occasion with our first anachronism. I won’t tell you what I thought of. It’s something quite extraordinary, I promise you.”
Clara stared at her in astonishment. “You mustn’t take us seriously, Liza. It’s only a joke. We wouldn’t think of defacing your house.” To the maid, who had stalked in bearing the tea tray, she said, “Mattie, you’ll have to take that back. You know I won’t tolerate tea bags in the house. Please go back and make the tea properly, just as I showed you.”
“They didn’t have nothing but tea bags at the store, Mrs. Longacre,” Mattie replied. “Afraid it’s tea bags or nothing, Ma’am.”
“Oh, all right!” Clara said, and glanced in exasperation at her friends.
This maid was new to the community, and probably would not stay long, because she was already complaining about the lack of entertainment around. It was seldom that one of the houses at Herbert’s Retreat was not in an uproar with a maid just gone or about to go, a dinner planned and the hostess frantically phoning her neighbors to discover which of the remaining maids would be available to help out for the evening. All this gave the maids a great sense of power, of course. For some of them, the power was satisfaction enough. Those were the ones who stayed on year after year. The others flew in and out of Herbert’s Retreat like birds, carrying their baggage with them, entering service there with misgiving and leaving with rancor.
“I forgot to pick up my tea at Vendôme on Thursday,” Clara said when Mattie had left the room, “and I just had to tell that fool to get what she could in the village. Oh, just once, to have a good maid!”
Liza sat ready to deal with them one by one or all together when they took up the attack where they had left off. But if they were baiting her, as she thought, they seemed to have had enough of it. “Speaking of maids, as we do all the time,” Arabelle said, “Clara, I loved your cute little story in this week’s Flyaway about that maid in White’s Hotel.”
The Flyaway was the weekly publication circulated at the Retreat. Liza had not yet taken her new copy from its wrapper.
“The most extraordinary, wonderful caricature of an English maid I’ve ever seen,” Clara said, pleased. “And of course White’s Hotel is the perfect background for her.”
Travel, hotels in Switzerland, hotels in Cannes, matching embroidery wools in that little shop on the Left Bank, driving through Cornwall on the wrong side of the road, White’s Hotel in London—it was one way of dealing Liza out, and they didn’t even have to do it on purpose. They couldn’t avoid doing it. At such times, Liza sat, silent, with no stories to match with theirs, no recommendations, no frantic experiences. To travel, she and Tom would have to leave the Retreat, and she didn’t dare. And anyway, even if they had picked up and gone to Europe the summer before, like Clara, she still held the trump cards. Liza could stay at White’s Hotel if she chose to, but Clara’s grandparents had stayed there.
“Even the men hang around in the hall trying to get a look at her,” Clara said. “I simply had to write about her. I’m sending her the article, of course.”
“Does she really wear high-buttoned boots, Clara?” Margaret Slade asked delightedly.
“High-buttoned boots, black lisle stockings, long black dress—alpaca, I suppose—apron like an English nanny’s, for God’s sake, not a maid’s apron at all, but it’s just right for Betty Trim, she’s so outrageous anyway, and, to top it all off, a parlormaid’s cap, but worn backwards, and behind it an enormous bun of the most wiggy-looking, coarse gray hair you’ve ever seen, except that it’s not a wig. Oh, and of course she curtsies, and calls everyone ‘m’lady.’ It’s simply killing. I swear she has the coldest, fishiest eyes I’ve ever seen in a human head. She never smiles, and the porter told me she thinks of nothing but money. Nothing. She could tell you the amount she made in tips any day in the last fifteen years, but she won’t talk, of course. She’s very closemouthed. She reads nothing but her savings book. She just simply loves and adores money. I can’t understand why she’s not a cashier, or something. Maybe it would break her heart to have to handle money she couldn’t put away in her bank. I couldn’t say all that in the Flyaway, of course. I want to stay in her good graces.”
“Oh, Lord, and to think of what we have to put up with in our kitchens,” Margaret said enviously. “Imagine having a pearl like that in the house.”
“Oh, you can’t imagine, Margaret,” Clara said enthusiastically. “She never makes a mistake. She knows her place to the last millimeter, and your place, too. She used to be a parlormaid, but she’s in the ladies’ room now. She’s a little queen there, of course. And then tips. And she’s independent. You should see the ladies trying to charm her, but she never bats an eye. Isn’t it killing the way we all go down on our knees to curry favor with someone who’s really indifferent to us?”
“I know,” Arabelle said. “Do you remember that ghastly Miss Vesper at school? Why, we positively crawled.”
Liza let her mind wander, as she often did when they spoke of their snobbish school days. She was suffocating with a joyful idea, and fearful that Clara might spot her excitement and divine its cause.
That evening, Liza wrote to Betty Trim, the maid in the ladies’ room of White’s Hotel in London, offering her five times her present salary, describing the lightness of the work she would be expected to do, enjoining secrecy, and enclosing a check for the fare over. Betty replied, demanding ten times her present salary and an additional sum every month to equal the tips she had received during the corresponding month in her best year, which was 1947, and asking for a signed contract guaranteeing her job for three years. She returned the check, saying she would require a ticket on the Queen Mary, complete and paid for, when the date of her departure was set, and she requested a bank draft to cover the amount of her return fare. She also asked for traveling expenses. Liza sent a ticket for the earliest date she could get, which was December 19. For good measure, she made it a first-class ticket, and added a generous check for expenses and a surprise Christmas bonus. She also sent a signed contract, binding on herself and on Betty, with a copy for Betty to sign and return. Betty replied, not enclosing her own signed copy, because, she explained, it was too much to expect a person to sign away her life in a strange land. She did, however, return the ticket, saying that she could not leave her job until after her Christmas and New Year’s tips were in, and suggesting January 2 as the earliest date on which she could be expected to start her journey. She added that a second-class ticket would be more suitable, considering her station in life. Liza sent her the ticket she asked for, and enclosed an additional bank draft for emergencies. She begged Betty to reply by cable. Betty replied by ordinary mail, confirming the arrangement and explaining that to her mind a cable that was not for an emergency was a wasteful extravagance.
Liza, groveling, was nevertheless triumphant.
“She needn’t lift a finger unless she wants to, except to serve tea,” Liza said to Tom. “And there’ll be a cleaning woman in every day. What’s more, you’ll meet her at the pier in a taxi, and drive her out here. If the boat docks on schedule, you should have her out here by one, at the very latest.”
“I lunch at twelve-thirty,” Tom said. “You’re losing your sense of proportion, Liza. Why can’t you send this woman a bus schedule. Or rent a car for her. Or tell her to take a taxi out. Or tell her to sit in Schrafft’s or someplace, and I’ll pick her up at five. You can’t expect me to interrupt my day like this! I’m always at lunch at one o’clock!” Tears of chagrin filled his eyes.
Liza turned back to her desk, on which two tall piles of square white envelopes stood neatly stacked. “Now, that’s settled,” she said. “I want you to take these out and post them at once. If Clara still has any idea of trying to give a benevolent little party for me, this should fix her. I wish I could see her face when she opens this in the morning. ‘To celebrate our first anachronism, Miss Betty Trim, of White’s Hotel.’ She’ll be the one they’ll laugh at now, not me. She’ll never dare make fun of me again.”
The day of Betty’s arrival turned out cold and desolate, with a raw wind. Tom drove in to town, rushed into his club, rustled busily through the morning papers, and stood for a minute at his window, his arm embracing the back of his chair. Then, sighing profoundly, he dashed outside into the taxi the doorman was holding for him. The shop windows, brilliantly lighted against the gray day, looked cheerless and efficient without their recent Christmas decorations. The wind swept mercilessly along the pavements, carrying shuddering, cowering human beings before it. Traffic across town was locked, and drivers of trucks, taxis, and private cars glared satanically into one another’s eyes and breathed plumes of vapor with the invective that issued from their lips. Tom’s driver, cursing, inched his way to the pier. Tom contemptuously ignored this hurly-burly. Slumped in the corner of his seat, warm in his gloves and muffler and his fur-lined coat, with enormous galoshes on his feet, he let his mind roam sulkily ahead through his spoiled day.
He recognized Betty with no difficulty. She was all in black, and very small—not more than five feet tall. About forty-five, Tom thought morosely, and she’s no beauty. He could hardly bear to look at her, he hated her so much, but at his garage he motioned politely toward the front seat of his car, only to find her already fitted into the middle of the back seat between her two bulging pieces of luggage, neither one of which was a suitcase. She acknowledged his gesture with a flickering, uninterested glance, and then she fixed her eyes on the street ahead and waited, without impatience, to be driven into her new life.
The city streets seemed to interest Betty as little as they did Tom, and as the car left the city, she cast no glance at the wintry Hudson. The countryside, forlorn, cracked and bitten with frost, got no sign from her. She stared stonily ahead. She might have been a member of royalty, forced to ride in the state funeral procession of some detested relative. The truth is that inside Betty’s head there was only a small blackboard, on which she added and subtracted diligently, using a piece of chalk, as she had been taught to do in school. The problems she solved were not large, for her brain was tiny, but she was thorough, and she went over each exercise at least ten times, proceeding slowly, using cunning, persistence, and inhuman concentration. She never put a figure down on paper. Only a fool would do that—someone willing to broadcast his private affairs to the world. She trusted no one. She knew that poor people’s savings were often stolen. She had never taken a risk in her life, nor had she ever loaned a penny. Or borrowed one. In the car, she added the dollars she had in her purse now, shielding herself against the sudden misery that had come on her at the thought of her little hoard of money far away in London. Tom’s voice interrupted her. He had turned off the highway onto a narrow country road, hardly more than a pathway, that appeared to have been cut at random through a wild wood. “Welcome to Herbert’s Retreat,” he said stiffly.
Betty turned her head to the right, and then to the left. Her eyes belittled all they saw. Beyond the irregular wall of trees and hedge, leafless now, that lined the road, houses, standing solitary, glimmered white in the dull winter air. Between the houses, a wilderness flourished—trees, bushes, remnants of old hedge, dry yellow weeds, and tangled undergrowth. Coming to his own fine house, Tom stopped the car with a jerk and scrambled out. He opened the rear door and lifted out the two pieces of luggage. Then he turned to give Betty a hand, but again she was before him, with both feet firmly on the ground. The front door opened and Liza stood there. Tom brushed rudely past her, dumped the luggage in the hall, and went into the living room, where he sat down and sulked.
“I hope you will he happy here, Betty,” Liza said when her treasure was safely inside the front door.
“Thank you, m’lady,” Betty replied, and bobbed up and down.
She really curtsies, Liza thought deliriously.
Betty’s mean little eyes surveyed Liza. I could buy you and sell you, m’lady, she thought. She was satisfied that she knew all that was to be known of human nature. “I can sum them up in one glance, no matter who they are,” she would say to herself—and the sum was always the same. Liza, not knowing she had been judged and dismissed, proceeded to show Betty through the house. The walls of all the rooms were clay-colored. The furniture was constructed of silvery piping. The chairs had white tweed sling seats. The tabletops were of thick plate glass. Upstairs, Liza paused with an air of extra importance before a closed door and smiled at Betty before she opened it. Then they were looking into Betty’s own room, which was furnished like the rest of the house and contained a narrow bed. The window looked out on the nearest houses, and on the withered jungle that separated them.
“No river view here, I’m afraid,” Liza said in a tone of bright apology.
Betty walked to the window and looked out. “I’m not much for looking at the water, m’lady,” she said.
“My mother’s room is just down the hall,” Liza said. “She’s resting now, so we won’t disturb her. Your bathroom is downstairs next to the kitchen, as you saw. There’s only one on this floor, and my mother shares it with us. These old houses—all fireplaces and no bathrooms, you know.” She waved her hand in a gesture that was friendly but not, she felt, familiar.
“Thank you, m’lady,” Betty said.
Alone, Betty moved first her arms, to lift her hat from her head, then her legs, to walk to the closet, which she opened, displaying no curiosity about it. She hung her hat by its elastic from a hook on the closet door. She then hung her coat on a hanger, sat down in her sling chair, tested it a minute, and, satisfied, bent over to unbutton her boots. Her house slippers were downstairs, locked up in one of her bundles, so, with the boots open and flapping, she clumped down the back stairs to the kitchen and set about making tea. When the kettle was on, she built a fire in the huge open fireplace, using paper towels and three logs from a beautifully geometrical pile that lay in a white basket against the wall. She was sitting in front of the fire having her cup of tea when the door opened and Mrs. Conroy shuffled in. Mrs. Conroy’s face was immensely lined, but whether the lines had been put there by a life of goodness or by a life of badness it would have been hard to say. She simply looked very old. Her manner would have been called obsequious in a younger person, and her hands were gathered nervously around a large white handkerchief, which from time to time she pressed against her mouth, perhaps to hide a tremor—of age, or of amusement, or of malice.
Betty regarded the intruder bleakly. I could buy you and sell you, she thought as she got up.
“I’m Mrs. Conroy,” the old woman said beseechingly, “Mrs. Frye’s mother you know. I see you have the fire going. I dearly love a fire, but Mrs. Frye won’t permit them in the house, although she won’t object to you having one, I’m sure. She doesn’t approve of open fires. She tries to keep me in my room. I dislike my room. I hate the furniture. I expect you do, too, coming from England. My room is exactly like yours, except that I have that unwholesome view of the river. I like to watch a street and see what the people are up to. I thought, being English, you might be having a cup of tea, and I thought perhaps you might permit me to join you here. Mrs. Frye won’t permit me to have tea.”
“I’m sorry, m’lady, but I don’t permit ladies in my kitchen,” Betty said.
“Only for a minute, to get the heat of the fire on my legs.”
“It’s out of the question, m’lady. I must ask you to leave my kitchen at once.”
“I’m not let have tea, and I’m not let have a fire,” Mrs. Conroy said. “I notice you give yourself tea and a fire, though. I notice you have a fire and a nice cup of tea there beside you.”
“What I do for myself and what I do for other people are two entirely different things, m’lady,” Betty said.
“I only wanted to get the heat of the fire on my legs a minute,” Mrs. Conroy beseeched. “Radiators aren’t the same thing at all. Don’t you think I’m right? Radiators are no good, are they? . . . Well, you might at least answer me.” In the doorway, she paused and said, without looking back, “You’re just the same sort she is! Just the same!”
When the door closed, Betty sat down by the fire to finish her tea. As she brought the cup to her lips, she raised her eyes and saw Mrs. Conroy’s handkerchief lying crumpled on the floor. She rose, picked up the handkerchief, and, boots still loose and flapping, went up the stairs and knocked on the door next to her own. A voice answered faintly. When Betty opened the door, Mrs. Conroy was sitting in her wing chair, which she had turned so that her back was to the window. One of her account books lay open on her lap. “Oh,” she said. “I was hoping it was my daughter. She hates me to turn this chair around, but I’d rather look at a dry door than at that wet view any day of the week. She hates to have anything in the house changed, you know. You’d better remember that. She’s very set in her ways.”
“I’m returning your handkerchief, m’lady,” Betty said rudely, and dropped it on the bed.
She was about to leave when she saw the shabby books on their shelves. The word “Accounts,” inked on the back of each volume, sprang out at her. “Excuse me, m’lady,” she said. “May I ask you a question?”
“Of course you may ask me a question, Betty.”
“What sort of books are they you have, m’lady?”
“They belonged to my poor husband, Mr. Conroy. That’s all he left me in the world, what you see there. He kept them himself; every stroke is in his own handwriting. He ran a little stationery shop in Brooklyn the last nineteen years of his life. We lived behind the shop. We didn’t make a fortune out of it, but we got along. He had no head for business, but he enjoyed keeping his books. I look into them when I’m in the dumps. They remind me of so much; it’s like as if I was reading his diary. He put down everything pertaining to the shop. Ah, it brings it all back, reading these old books.”
“Might I see one of them, m’lady? I enjoy sums.”
“Indeed you may, indeed you may!” Mrs. Conroy cried. Betty made a step toward the case, but the old lady was there before her, and lifted out a volume, dated Nov. 1899–May 1900, and handed it to her.
“The first year we were in the shop,” she said. “Liza wasn’t born then. She appeared in 1913, the only one we had.”
Betty turned the pages of the book. “I always had a fancy for a little shop of my own somewhere,” she said. “If I ever got enough money saved. Ah, I suppose I’ll never have it, but it does no harm to think of it. I’d like to look at these, Mrs. Conroy. It’s not hard, he has it all down nice and easy.”
“Oh, it wasn’t mathematics that interested my poor Alfred,” Mrs. Conroy said. “Only, he liked to feel he was being businesslike. He loved marking things down. ‘My simple arithmetic,’ he used to call it. ‘I’m doing my simple arithmetic,’ he’d say when I asked him what he was up to.”
“I do like working sums, m’lady,” Betty said. “I was always a great hand at addition and subtraction. I often thought I’d have been good in a bank, only I never got the chance. Would you let me borrow this for a day or two? I’ll bring you up a cup of tea, if you like.”
Mrs. Conroy regarded her for a moment. “Of course I’ll let you borrow it,” she said at last. “But I’ll come down for the tea, if you don’t mind.”
Betty touched the bookcase. “Maybe I’d better take the first two or three, m’lady,” she said. “That way I wouldn’t have to be disturbing you so often.”
A strong old arm came up and knocked her hand away. “One at a time, Betty. This room isn’t going to feel the same with even that one missing. Mr. Conroy spent six months of his life on every one of these books. There’s two to a year. It’s going to take you a month anyway to get through that one. Now we’ll go down and have our tea, nice and cozy by the fire. I won’t bother you. I’ll just enjoy the tea and you can enjoy your book, but mind you make no marks on it. And maybe you’d better make a fresh pot of tea. It’ll have got cold, standing there all this time.”
They had been sitting in the kitchen for some time when Betty looked up from her book. “You opened the shop November 15th, m’lady. That’s the day Mr. Conroy starts here. And on December 22nd, m’lady, you went into the shop, went through all the Christmas numbers of the magazines, and left blue marks all over them.”
“Indeed, I remember the day,” Mrs. Conroy said cheerfully. “I had just finished making a blueberry pie for his dinner, and I didn’t take the time to wash my hands. Oh, he was angry when he came to sell one of those magazines and had to mark down the price!”
“With good reason he was angry, m’lady,” Betty said grimly. “And the place just started and not making money yet. Do you know how much money he lost with your blueberries?”
“Oh, I know, I know,” Mrs. Conroy said, laughing. “Don’t reproach me about it, Betty. He never let me forget about it. Turn over the page and never mind about it.”
Betty bent to the book. A few minutes later she raised her head again. “Who was Miss Rorke, m’lady?” she asked.
“A poor old retired schoolteacher, Miss Rorke was. She lived up the street from us. Never had a penny, but she loved to read. Mr. Conroy let her take what she liked. He had a soft spot for her. She died then, and we never got a cent of it back. She ended owing us thirty-two dollars and seventeen cents.”
“So far, she owes us two dollars and three cents,” Betty said.
“Poor old Miss Rorke,” Mrs. Conroy said contentedly. “Betty, I’ve been thinking. I’d like a cup of tea in my room first thing in the morning. As soon as you make your own. Say eight-thirty. That’s fair, isn’t it?”
Betty sat up straight. “Now then, m’lady, that’s out of the question, so it is—morning tea in your room!”
Mrs. Conroy continued to watch the fire. “It was you who reminded me,” she said. “Miss Rorke was a great strain on the regular book, the one you have there. There was too much of her, she was always in and out, so Mr. Conroy had an extra little book, for her and one or two others like her. I’m not saying you need it, but it would be a great help to you.”
“All right,” Betty said without rancor. “Half past eight you’ll get your tea. Sugar and cream, the way you have it now.”
“No cream in the morning,” Mrs. Conroy said. “Cream makes me queasy in the morning. Just sugar, thanks, Betty.”
They exchanged a glance. Betty’s eyes were wary and calculating.
Liza burst into the kitchen. “I looked everywhere for you, Mother!” she cried. “You’ve turned your chair around again. And why aren’t you up in your own room? What are you doing here in the kitchen?”
“I’m having my tea,” the old woman said calmly.
“You know the doctor says it isn’t good for you, Mother. Now please go on upstairs, and I’ll get Betty to bring you a glass of hot milk. I see you’ve lighted the fire, Betty. I don’t approve of open fires, but I suppose you’re accustomed to having one. Go on, Mother.”
“I don’t want hot milk, Liza,” Mrs. Conroy said, pressing her handkerchief to her lips. “Tea never did me any harm before, and I don’t trust that country doctor of yours anyway. Of course, if you insist, I’ll go upstairs. I’m dependent on your charity now, I know that. But first I’ll take my book, please, Betty.”
Betty snatched the book from the table. “No harm in Mrs. Conroy having a cup of tea, m’lady,” she said.
“I’m the best judge of that!” Liza cried. “And what is that stupid old book doing down here? It doesn’t belong down here.”
“It does now,” Mrs. Conroy said. “And another thing. I’d like you to put a nice, old-fashioned stuffed armchair in here by the fire for me. These pipe things of yours are hard on my back.”
“We’ve had that all out before. I absolutely refuse to allow one of those atrocities in my— Is this a joke, Mother? Is this some terrible kind of joke? A kitchen is not the place for an armchair, and there’s no room anyway, and people at Herbert’s Retreat don’t sit around having tea in the kitchen with the servants. And I would like to point out, Betty, that you are here to work, not to entertain guests at tea.”
“I have my contract, m’lady,” Betty said.
“And you can’t very well afford to let her go anyway, can you, Liza?” Mrs. Conroy whispered. “Think how they’d love to laugh at you around here. And think how you’d feel if one of them got her instead. There are plenty of your friends who’d love to have a woman like Betty working for them. And you’d still have to pay her for the full term.”
Liza stared incredulously at Betty for a minute, and then at her mother. “Very well,” she said with difficulty. “Finish your tea. Perhaps it will make you sick. I hope not.”
The derision in their eyes frightened her, and she started for the door.
“And one more thing,” her mother said good-humoredly. “From now on, I’m going to leave my teeth in the bathroom at night.”
“Oh, my God,” Liza said, and left the kitchen.
“I cannot abide the sight of those things in the room with me,” Mrs. Conroy went on. “This way, nobody will have to look at them.”
They were silent for a while, Betty absorbed in her book, Mrs. Conroy peacefully watching the rise and fall of the flames. “I think I’ll get a cat,” she said suddenly. “Liza hates cats.”
In the living room, sitting in sepulchral silence, Tom and Liza were first startled, then appalled, by the sudden screeches that came at them from the kitchen—screeches of laughter that was rude and unrestrained, and that renewed itself even as it struck and shattered against the walls of the kitchen.
