The Complete Short Stories Part 20

The front-door bell was ringing, now. I was not at all sure I should answer it. There was no reason to expect visitors and I had been a.s.sured by the Lowthers of my complete solitude. But I opened the garden room window, smitten with nerves, and called out, 'Who is it you want? I'm afraid the Lowthers are away. I'm only a temporary tenant.'

'We want you,' said the woman who seemed to be the younger of the two.

I was still almost sure I had seen them before. They gave me the creeps. The older woman pressed the bell again. 'Let us in.

'Who are you?' I said.

'Harper and Wilton,' said the younger one. 'Don't panic. We are merely outraged.'

Harper and Wilton - where had I heard their names before?

'Do I know you?' I said.

'Do you know us?' said one of the women, the taller. 'You made us. My name is Marion Harper known as Harper and my friend is Marion Wilton known as Wilton. We fight for the Vote for Women.

Oh G.o.d, I remembered then that years ago, many, many years ago, some time in the 1950s, I wrote a story about two Edwardian suffragettes. What could I recall of that story? It was never published. Was it finished? I didn't find the two characters, Harper and Wilton, very sympathetic but I had certainly had some fun with them.

'What do you want from me?' I inquired from the window. I had no intention of letting them into the house.

'You cast the story away,' said little Wilton. 'We've been looking for you for some time. Now you've got to give us substance otherwise we'll haunt you.

For my part Harper and Wilton were lying at the back of a drawer in which I used to put unfinished stories and poems when, long ago, I started writing fiction and verse.

I packed up my belongings, packed them in the car, and drove off, watched at a distance by Harper, Wilton and Joe. At home I searched for the missing ma.n.u.script and eventually found it, curled at the edges. I read it through: One day there appeared at the window a youth of about twenty. Unfortunately, he had a squint.

There was another boarding-house opposite. Here, on the second floor, lived Miss Wilton and Miss Harper, members of the suffragette movement. Their parents, who lived in the country, gave them money to keep away.

Three weeks later, when Miss Wilton could stand it no longer, she went along the landing to Miss Harper's room. 'Harper,' she said, 'I can stand it no longer.'

'Why Wilton,' said Harper, 'don't be discouraged. We had three hundred and four new recruits last month. Remember the words of Pankhurst -'

'Harper,' said Wilton severely, 'I refer to a personal matter.'

'Really?' said Harper, losing interest and starting to roll a pair of stays very tight and neat. 'Well, I haven't time to discuss anything personal. I'm busy with my Reports.'

'I'll be brief,' said Wilton. 'Every afternoon there's a young man at the window across the road -'

'I thought as much,' said Harper.

'Don't think I've been spying,' her friend protested. 'But I can't avoid seeing what I see. He has been making signs.

'I have observed it,' Harper said. 'I advise you to live elsewhere if you can't resist temptation. I cannot do more for you Wilton. There are larger issues, important things.'

'Indeed. You consider it important to encourage the advances of a strange man. I hardly think the Committee will take that view,' stated Wilton.

'Ah!' said Harper. 'Ah!'

'Ah!' said Wilton. 'Yes, I intend to report this to the Bayswater Committee.'

'You're too late,' Harper said, 'with your wily scheme. I have already reported the matter. You may read a copy of my statement.'

Wilton moved over to the gas light with the paper, and read: 'With regret, I have to report that Miss M. Wilton of our Ranks, has lately behaved in a manner prejudicial to our Cause. She has openly encouraged a male person, presumably a student, to make overtures from a window opposite her residence. I fear we will soon have to call upon Miss Wilton to resign from the Movement.'

Wilton handed back the report. 'It's a clever plan of yours,' she said scornfully, to cover your traces by implicating me in your unworthy undertakings. But I will prove my innocence. You will be exposed.'

'Remember,' she added, 'the Secretary already has doubts regarding your feminist zeal. The fact that you wear those stays to give you a figure, is alone an indication that -'

'Kindly depart,' Harper said.

'Moreover, I disagree that he is a student,' said Wilton.

Next day, the youth opposite appeared to believe he was getting somewhere with one of the girls. At her unmistakable bidding he crossed the road, and looked up expectantly at Wilton's window. She observed that the idiot seemed to be watching Harper's window. He needn't worry; Harper was out. Wilton dropped an envelope. It contained a note, unsigned, executed on Harper's typewriting-machine. It also contained a key.

It was the front-door key, and the note explained how to get to her room, at ten that night. Only, of course, it was Harper's room she directed him to, this Wilton.

She heard Harper come in. Wilton composed herself to wait for justice at ten o'clock. She would fetch the landlady. A man in Harper's room. A noisy scene. The Committee would be informed.

As the hour advanced, the youth was forced to consider an alternative method of keeping the a.s.signment, because, due to excitement, he had lost the key. Courageous, though unimaginative, he started climbing the drainpipe which ran between Wilton's window and Harper's. Wilton watched this lamp-lit performance, appalled. Harper, too, observed it; and before he had got two feet, the water from Harper's wash-jug descended. Wilton worked quickly. Her jug was empty, so she threw out the jug. Harper swooped downstairs to the door. Wilton followed.

The young man was very wet, very stunned.

'Don't move,' said Harper. 'I shall hand you over.'

'Harper,' said Wilton, 'I'm arresting him. He had an appointment with you. It's shameful. You are exposed at last.'

The landlady was suddenly in the doorway. 'Constable!' she called. A policeman at the top of the street turned and ambled towards them.

Harper was, in spite of her stays, the more emanc.i.p.ated of the two; she looked at Wilton. 'This is my man,' she said. 'You get the h.e.l.l out of it.'

'What's going on?' said the policeman.

'Language!' said the landlady. 'These suffragettes!'

'Suffragettes, eh?' said the policeman.

'Constable,' said Wilton, a-flutter, 'this man was attempting to climb up this lady. This drainpipe was encouraging him.'

'It's her fault,' the young man gasped, glaring at Wilton. Owing to the squint, the policeman was unable to decide which girl was meant. Not that it mattered.

'Oh, suffragettes!' said the policeman.

'Yes, I was attacked,' sighed the youth.

The constable took all the particulars. He took Harper and Wilton by the sleeves. 'This way,' he said, 'and come quiet. Disturbing the Peace. Suffragettes.

'I hope they get a month,' said the landlady.

'Three months more likely,' said the policeman. 'You all right now, sir!'

'More or less,' replied the young man cheerfully. 'Good night, Constable. Good night, sweet ladies.'

They only got a month. But you see, sweet ladies, what they all had to suffer to get us the vote.

I raced back to the country with this ma.n.u.script in my handbag. It had been one of many and many that I had always intended to revise when I had a spare day or two. Those spare days had never come. But looking at the story I didn't see what was missing. Harper and Wilton had adequately fulfilled their destiny for that little s.p.a.ce of history at the turn of the twentieth century that their story occupied.

Harper and Wilton were waiting for me on the doorstep of my country retreat.

'How about it?' This was Wilton.

I noticed that Joe the gardener was observing us from the mysterious wooded part of the garden which I had greatly taken to. I love mysterious gardens. I felt that Joe should come and join us. I was dangling the door keys in my hand. On no account would I let any of them cross the threshold. I was carried away by the fact of Joe's intensely squinting eyes as he approached. Again I wondered why he wore no corrective gla.s.ses. How could I have envisaged and foreseen this boy with the great squint all those years ago when I had written this episodic little story of Harper and Wilton?

Joe was obviously fascinated by the two girls in their unconventional clothes. But here again it was difficult to see which one he was observing at any one time.

'He has given us no peace,' said Wilton. 'He follows us everywhere. Don't you know that is a crime? In the world of today, more than ever.

's.e.xual molestation,' said Harper.

'Oh, what has he done?' I said.

'Followed us everywhere. He is molesting us. It was he who should have gone to prison, not us.

I saw my chance. I sat down on the doorstep and re-wrote the ending of the story in the light of current correctness. The girls, Harper and Wilton, were vindicated and it was the squint-eyed student who was taken off by the police. I showed it to Harper and Wilton.

Not only that, since they were tepid in their satisfaction, I let myself into the house while the group remained uneasily in the garden. I called the police and said that our garden boy was troubling two young women by his unwanted attention. Rather languidly, they agreed to come along and see what it was all about.

They took Joe away. Harper and Wilton disappeared, evidently satisfied. Joe came back shortly, having been merely cautioned, and got on with his weeding of the garden.

The Executor When my uncle died all the literary ma.n.u.scripts went to a university foundation, except one. The correspondence went too, and the whole of his library. They came (a white-haired man and a young girl) and surveyed his study. Everything, they said, would be desirable and it would make a good price if I let the whole room go - his chair, his desk, the carpet, even his ashtrays. I agreed to this. I left everything in the drawers of the desk just as it was when my uncle died, including the bottle of Librium and a rusty razor blade.

My uncle died this way: he was sitting on the bank of the river, playing a fish. As the afternoon faded a man pa.s.sed by, and then a young couple who made pottery pa.s.sed him. As they said later, he was sitting peacefully awaiting the catch and of course they didn't disturb him. As night fell the colonel and his wife pa.s.sed by; they were on their way home from their daily walk. They knew it was too late for my uncle to be simply sitting there, so they went to look. He had been dead, the doctor p.r.o.nounced, from two to two and a half hours. The fish was still struggling with the bait. It was a mild heart attack. Everything my uncle did was mild, so different from everything he wrote. Yet perhaps not so different. He was supposed to be 'far out', so one didn't know what went on out there. Besides, he had not long returned from a trip to London. They say, still waters run deep.

But far out was how he saw himself. He once said that if you could imagine modern literature as a painting, perhaps by Brueghel the Elder, the people and the action were in the foreground, full of colour, eating, stealing, copulating, laughing, courting each other, excreting, and stabbing each other, selling things, climbing trees. Then in the distance, at the far end of a vast plain, there he would be, a speck on the horizon, always receding and always there, and always a necessary and mysterious component of the picture; always there and never to be taken away, essential to the picture - a speck in the distance, which if you were to blow up the detail would simply be a vague figure, plodding on the other way.

I am no fool, and he knew it. He didn't know it at first, but he had seven months in which to learn that fact. I gave up my job in Edinburgh in the government office, a job with a pension, to come here to the lonely house among the Pentland Hills to live with him and take care of things. I think he imagined I was going to be another Elaine when he suggested the arrangement. He had no idea how much better I was for him than Elaine. Elaine was his mistress, that is the stark truth. 'My common-law wife,' he called her, explaining that in Scotland, by tradition, the woman you are living with is your wife. As if I didn't know all that nineteenth-century folklore; and it's long died out. Nowadays you have to do more than say 'I marry you, I marry you, I marry you,' to make a woman your wife. Of course, my uncle was a genius and a character. I allowed for that. Anyway, Elaine died and I came here a month later. Within a month I had cleared up the best part of the disorder. He called me a Scottish puritan girl, and at forty-one it was nice to be a girl and I wasn't against the Scottish puritanical attribution either since I am proud to be a Scot; I feel nationalistic about it. He always had that smile of his when he said it, so I don't know how he meant it. They say he had that smile of his when he was found dead, fis.h.i.+ng.

'I appoint my niece Susan Kyle to be my sole literary executor.' I don't wonder he decided on this course after I had been with him for three months. Probably for the first time in his life all his papers were in order. I went into Edinburgh and bought box-files and cover-files and I filed away all that mountain of papers, each under its separate heading. And I knew what was what. You didn't catch me filing away a letter from Angus Wilson or Saul Bellow in the same place as an ordinary 'W' or 'B', a Miss Mary Whitelaw or a Mrs Jonathan Brown. I knew the value of these letters, they went into a famous-persons file, bulging and of value. So that in a short time my uncle said, 'There's little for me to do now, Susan, but die.' Which I thought was melodramatic, and said so. But I could see he was forced to admire my good sense. He said, 'You remind me of my mother, who prepared her shroud all ready for her funeral.' His mother was my grandmother Janet Kyle. Why shouldn't she have sat and sewn her shroud? People in those days had very little to do, and here I was running the house and looking after my uncle's papers with only the help of Mrs Donaldson three mornings a week, where my grandmother had four pairs of hands for indoor help and three out. The rest of the family never went near the house after my grandmother died, for Elaine was always there with my uncle.

The property was distributed among the family, but I was the sole literary executor. And it was up to me to do what I liked with his literary remains. It was a good thing I had everything inventoried and filed, ready for sale. They came and took the total archive as they called it away, all the correspondence and ma.n.u.scripts except one. That one I kept for myself. It was the novel he was writing when he died, an unfinished ma.n.u.script. I thought, Why not? Maybe I will finish it myself and publish it. I am no fool, and my uncle must have known how the book was going to end. I never read any of his correspondence, mind you; I was too busy those months filing it all in order. I did think, however, that I would read this ma.n.u.script and perhaps put an ending to it. There were already ten chapters. My uncle had told me there was only another chapter to go. So I said nothing to the Foundation about that one unfinished ma.n.u.script; I was only too glad when they had come and gone, and the papers were out of the house. I got the painters in to clean the study. Mrs Donaldson said she had never seen the house looking so like a house should be.

Under my uncle's will I inherited the house, and I planned eventually to rent rooms to tourists in the summer, bed and breakfast. In the meantime I set about reading the unfinished ma.n.u.script, for it was only April, and I'm not a one to let the gra.s.s grow under my feet. I had learnt to decipher that old-fas.h.i.+oned handwriting of his which looked good on the page but was not too clear. My uncle had a treasure in me those last months of his life, although he said I was like a book without an index -all information, and no way of getting at it. I asked him to tell me what information he ever got out of Elaine, who never pa.s.sed an exam in her life.

This last work of my uncle's was an unusual story for him, set in the seventeenth century here among the Pentland Hills. He had told me only that he was writing something strong and cruel, and that this was easier to accomplish in a historical novel. It was about the slow identification and final trapping of a witch, and I could see as I read it that he hadn't been joking when he said it was strong and cruel; he had often said things to frighten and alarm me, I don't know why. By chapter ten the trial of the witch in Edinburgh was only halfway through. Her fate depended entirely on chapter eleven, and on the negotiations that were being conducted behind the scenes by the opposing factions of intrigue. My uncle had left a pile of notes he had acc.u.mulated towards this novel, and I retained these along with the ma.n.u.script. But there was no sign in the notes as to how my uncle had decided to resolve the fate of the witch - whose name was Edith but that is by the way. I put the notebooks and papers away, for there were many other things to be done following the death of my famous uncle. The novel itself was written by hand in twelve notebooks. In the twelfth only the first two pages had been filled, the rest of the pages were blank, I am sure of this. The two filled pages came to the end of chapter ten. At the top of the next page was written 'Chapter Eleven'. I looked through the rest of the notebook to make sure my uncle had not made some note there on how he intended to continue; all blank, I am sure of it. I put the twelve notebooks, together with the sheaf of loose notes, in a drawer of the solid-mahogany dining-room sideboard.

A few weeks later I brought the notebooks out again, intending to consider how I might proceed with the completion of the book and so enhance its value. I read again through chapter ten; then, when I turned to the page where 'Chapter Eleven' was written, there in my uncle's handwriting was the following: Well, Susan, how do you feel about finis.h.i.+ng my novel? Aren't you a greedy little snoot, holding back my unfinished work, when you know the Foundation paid for the lot? What about your puritanical principles? Elaine and I are waiting to see how you manage to write Chapter Eleven. Elaine asks me to add it's lovely to see you scouring and cleaning those neglected corners of the house. But don't you know, Jaimie is having you on. Where does he go after lunch?

- Your affect Uncle I could hardly believe my eyes. The first shock I got was the bit about Jaimie, and then came the second shock, that the words were there at all. It was twelve-thirty at night and Jaimie had gone home. Jaimie Donaldson is the son of Mrs Donaldson, and it isn't his fault he's out of work. We have had experiences together, but n.o.body is to know that, least of all Mrs Donaldson who introduced him into the household merely to clean the windows and stoke the boiler. But the words? Where did they come from?

It is a lonely house, here in a fold of the Pentlands, surrounded by woods, five miles to the nearest cottage, six to Mrs Donaldson's, and the buses stop at ten p.m. I felt a great fear there in the dining-room, with the twelve notebooks on the table, and the pile of papers, a great cold, and a panic. I ran to the hall and lifted the telephone but didn't know how to explain myself or whom to phone. My story would sound like that of a woman gone crazy. Mrs Donaldson? The police? I couldn't think what to say to them at that hour of night. 'I have found some words that weren't there before in my uncle's ma.n.u.script, and in his own hand.' It was unthinkable. Then I thought perhaps someone had played me a trick. Oh no, I knew that this couldn't be. Only Mrs Donaldson had been in the dining-room, and only to dust, with me to help her. Jaimie had no chance to go there, not at all. I never used the dining-room now and had meals in the kitchen. But in fact I knew it wasn't them, it was Uncle. I wished with all my heart that I was a strong woman, as I had always felt I was, strong and sensible. I stood in the hall by the telephone, shaking. 'O G.o.d, everlasting and almighty,' I prayed, 'make me strong, and guide and lead me as to how Mrs Thatcher would conduct herself in circ.u.mstances of this nature.

I didn't sleep all night. I sat in the big kitchen stoking up the fire. Only once I moved, to go back into the dining-room and make sure that those words were there. Beyond a doubt they were, and in my uncle's handwriting - that handwriting it would take an expert forger to copy. I put the ma.n.u.script back in the drawer; I locked the dining-room door and took the key. My uncle's study, now absolutely empty, was above the kitchen. If he was haunting the house, I heard no sound from there or from anywhere else. It was a fearful night, waiting there by the fire.

Mrs Donaldson arrived in the morning, complaining that Jaimie was getting lazy; he wouldn't rise. Too many late nights.

'Where does he go after lunch?' I said.

'Oh, he goes for a round of golf after his dinner,' she said. 'He's always ready for a round of golf no matter what else there is to do. Golf is the curse of Scotland.'

I had a good idea who Jaimie was meeting on the golf course, and I could almost have been grateful to Uncle for pointing out to me in that sly way of his that Jaimie wandered in the hours after the midday meal which we called lunch and they called their dinner. By five o'clock in the afternoon Jaimie would come here to the house to fetch up the coal, bank the fire, and so forth. But all afternoon he would be on the links with that girl who works at the manse, Greta, younger sister of Elaine, the one who moved in here openly, ruining my uncle's morals, leaving the house to rot. I always suspected that family. After Elaine died it came out he had even introduced her to all his friends; I could tell from the letters of condolence, how they said things like 'He never got over the loss of Elaine' and 'He couldn't live without her'. And sometimes he called me Elaine by mistake. I was furious. Once, for example, I said, 'Uncle, stop pacing about down here. Go up to your study and do your scribbling; I'll bring you a cup of cocoa.' He said, with that glaze-eyed look he always had when he was interrupted in his thoughts, 'What's come over you, Elaine?' I said, 'I'm not Elaine, thank you very much.'

'Oh, of course,' he said, 'you are not Elaine, you are most certainly not her.' If the public that read his books by the tens of thousands could have seen behind the scenes, I often wondered what they would have thought. I told him so many a time, but he smiled in that sly way, that smile he still had on his face when they found him fis.h.i.+ng and stone dead.

After Mrs Donaldson left the house, at noon, I went up to my bedroom, half dropping from lack of sleep. Mrs Donaldson hadn't noticed anything; you could be falling down dead - they never look at you. I slept till four. It was still light. I got up and locked the doors, front and back. I pulled the curtains shut, and when Jaimie rang the bell at five o'clock I didn't open, I just let him ring. Eventually he went away. I expect he had plenty to wonder about. But I wasn't going to make him welcome before the fire and get him his supper, and take off my clothes there in the back room on the divan with him, in front of the television, while Uncle and Elaine were looking on, even though it is only Nature. No, I turned on the television for myself. You would never believe, it was a programme on the Scottish BBC about Uncle. I switched to TV One, and got a quiz show. And I felt hungry, for I'd eaten nothing since the night before.

But I couldn't face any supper until I had a.s.sured myself about that ma.n.u.script. I was fairly certain by now that it was a dream. 'Maybe I've been overworking,' I thought to myself. I had the key of the dining-room in my pocket and I took it and opened the door; I closed the curtains, and I went to the drawer and took out the notebook.

Not only were the words that I had read last night there, new words were added, a whole paragraph: Look up the Acts of the Apostles, Chapter 5, verses 1 to 10. See what happened to Ananias and Sapphira his wife. You're not getting on very fast with your scribbling, are you, Susan? Elaine and I were under the impression you were going to write Chapter Eleven. Why don't you take a cup of cocoa and get on with it? First read Acts, V, 1-10.

- Your affec Uncle Well, I shoved the book in the drawer and looked round the dining-room. I looked under the table and behind the curtains. It didn't look as if anything had been touched. I got out of the room and locked the door, I don't know how. I went to fetch my Bible, praying, 'O G.o.d omnipotent and all-seeing, direct and instruct me as to the way out of this situation, astonis.h.i.+ng as it must appear to Thee.' I looked up the pa.s.sage: But a certain man named Ananias, with Sapphira his wife, sold a possession.

And kept back part of the price, his wife also being privy to it, and brought a certain part and laid it at the apostles' feet.

But Peter said, Ananias, why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost, and to keep back part of the land?

I didn't read any more because I knew how it went on. Ananias and Sapphira, his wife, were both struck dead for holding back the portion of the sale for themselves. This was Uncle getting at me for holding back his ma.n.u.script from the Foundation. That's an impudence, I thought, to make such a comparison from the Bible, when he was an open and avowed sinner himself.

I thought it all over for a while. Then I went into the dining-room and got out that last notebook. Something else had been written since I had put it away, not half an hour before: Why don't you get on with Chapter Eleven? We're waiting for it.

I tore out the page, put the book away and locked the door. I took the page to the fire and put it on to burn. Then I went to bed.

This went on for a month. My uncle always started the page afresh with 'Chapter Eleven', followed by a new message. He even went so far as to put in that I had kept back bits of the housekeeping money, although, he wrote, I was well paid enough. That's a matter of opinion, and who did the economising, anyway? Always, after reading Uncle's disrespectful comments, I burned the page, and we were getting near the end of the notebook. He would say things to show he followed me round the house, and even knew my dreams. When I went into Edinburgh for some shopping he knew exactly where I had been and what I'd bought. He and Elaine listened in to my conversations on the telephone if I rang up an old friend. I didn't let anyone in the house except Mrs Donaldson. No more Jaimie. He even knew if I took a dose of salts and how long I had sat in the bathroom, the awful old man.

Mrs Donaldson one morning said she was leaving. She said to me, 'Why don't you see a doctor?' I said, 'Why?' But she wouldn't speak.

One day soon afterwards a man rang me up from the Foundation. They didn't want to bother me, they said, but they were rather puzzled. They had found in Uncle's letters many references to a novel. The Witch of the Pentlands, which he had been writing just before his death; and they had found among the papers a final chapter to this novel, which he had evidently written on loose pages on a train, for a letter of his, kindly provided by one of his many correspondents, proved this. Only they had no idea where the rest of the ma.n.u.script could be. In the end the witch Edith is condemned to be burned, but dies of her own will power before the execution, he said, but there must be ten more chapters leading up to it. This was Uncle's most metaphysical work, and based on a true history, the man said, and he must stress that it was very important.

I said that I would have a look. I rang back that afternoon and said I had found the whole book in a drawer in the dining-room.

So the man came to get it. On the phone he sounded very suspicious, in case there were more ma.n.u.scripts. 'Are you sure that's everything? You know, the Foundation's price included the whole archive. No, don't trust it to the mail, I'll be there tomorrow at two.

Just before he arrived I took a good drink, whisky and soda, as, indeed, I had been taking from sheer need all the past month. I had brought out the notebooks. On the blank page was written: Goodbye, Susan. It's lovely being a speck in the distance.

Your affec Uncle Another Pair of Hands I am the only son of parents old enough to be grandparents. This has advantages and disadvantages, for although I was out of touch with the intervening generation, my mother's friends when I was born being forty and upwards and my father's contemporaries mostly over sixty, I inherited a longer sense of living history than most people do. It was quite natural for my elders to talk about the life of the early part of the century to which they belonged, and I grew up knowing instinctively how things were done in those days and how they thought.

My mother died aged ninety-six, just after my fiftieth birthday. She had survived my father by nearly thirty years. She was active almost to the last, the only difficulty being her failing eyesight; her movements had slowed down a bit. But really she was, as everyone said, wonderful for her age. She died quickly of a stroke. To the last she was still wondering why I hadn't found the right woman to marry. Maybe she's wondering even yet. She belonged to the wondering generation.

My mother, originally mistress of a great house with countless servants, had moved down with the times like everyone else, each move to a smaller house and fewer servants being somewhat of a trauma to her. She called every new house poky, every domestic arrangement makes.h.i.+ft. It was not till well after the First World War that she got used to only four indoor servants including a manservant and three outdoor. Somewhere about the end of the fifties she was reduced to a compact Georgian house in Suss.e.x with twelve bedrooms surrounded by woodland. It became more and more enormous for one person as time went on. Her means were sufficient but she couldn't get the staff she needed. A few rooms were closed off entirely. Some years before she died she was doing very well with a gardener to keep going a token piece of lawn and some kitchen-garden patches, and, indoors, her cook-housekeeper, Miss Spigot, and Winnie the maid. By the end of her life, two years ago, she was left with only Winnie.

After Miss Spigot's death Winnie struggled on, in deep chaos, burning the food and quite unable to shop and clean. My mother wouldn't lift a finger beyond picking flowers; she sat calmly with her eternal sewing, which she called 'my work', giving orders. Up to then I had been accustomed to go down to spend Sunday and Monday with a few friends to cheer Ma up, and she had always looked forward to these visits. She had outlived her sisters and her friends, and she enjoyed company. My own work, a regular theatre column, prevented me from spending much more time with her. I don't notice dust but I do notice bad food; I must say Miss Spigot, who was already in her late seventies, had cooked very well. Our rooms had always been ready and bright when we arrived during Miss Spigot's lifetime. But suddenly all that ended. Winnie was frantic. I could see that my mother would have to move again. I begged her to let me get her a small flat in London. She was very old but by no means infirm, especially of purpose. 'Winnie can manage alone. I shall have a Word with her,' said Ma, and went on with her needlepoint or whatever. I could have killed her, but Ma wasn't the sort of person you could easily be nasty to.