Pack of Cards

  He put the paper down and said in the slow and careful voice that meant: listen because I am not going to repeat this, ‘You write out a card saying that you want a domestic help, and you put on it your name, address and telephone number, and you take it along to the tobacconist on the corner and ask them to put it in the window. Or, alternatively, you telephone or visit the local newspaper offices and put an advertisement in the paper. But that might be technically beyond you – I should settle for the tobacconist's window.’

  She studied the phrasing of the postcards: Woman Wanted 2-3 hrs. Mons. or Weds.; Domestic Help 2 mornings weekly, times to suit, fares paid. She copied some of them down and, at home, composed a version of her own with which she felt quite pleased, and took it to the shop. The newsagent pinned it up on the board, and she walked back down the street feeling bold and resolute, pushing the pram with one hand and trying to stop Emma dashing into the road with the other. A confidence grew; tomorrow, or the next day, the house would be swept and dusted, the meals pre-arranged and successful, Henry pleased. Henry cared a great deal about such things. It was, he had once explained, in a clipped voice, a simple matter of efficiency. Other women seemed to manage, he had said. And indeed they did – Jenny was all admiration. Henry's sister, with her four children. … Fiona Talbot next door … And how could Henry have known, in their courting days, that she would turn out like this? He had had a bit of a raw deal, she could see that, and except for the occasional sharp remark, he was very patient. Sometimes he polished things himself, or cleaned a sink or bath, and she was filled with a sense of guilt and inadequacy. Mercifully, the worst crises took place during the day, when he was at the office. Poor Henry, how could he have known …? But, a small voice cried out occasionally, how could I have known either?

  She waited for a response to her advertisement, vacillating between confidence and anxiety. When the front-door bell rang, and simultaneously Emma fell down the stairs, while she was in the middle of bathing the baby, she imagined another calm, efficient presence sorting things out, and the future seemed rosy indeed. But when, half an hour before the dreaded hour of Henry's return, Emma deposited a garden trug of dirt on the hall carpet and Jenny, in her haste to clear it up, stumbled against the kitchen table and knocked over the only bottle of milk, she was glad to be alone with her panic. She could always lie, and say Emma spilled the milk. But nothing happened all day; there was no response to the advertisement.

  The next day there was a phone call. It was about the job, the caller said. Were there, she enquired, any children? Jenny said yes, there were, uncertain if this was desirable or not. The caller said, regretfully, that she didn't care for a place with children, not that she had anything against them, but you never saw a job finished, did you, if there were small children around to mess the place up? They parted, with mutual apologies, and Jenny felt an unmistakable lift of relief. Later, she said to Henry, ‘I'm afraid there's no luck with the help. There aren't many answers.’

  He said, ‘Give it a bit longer.’ It was a bad evening: the dinner undercooked, and he had found all the children's toys under the sofa where she had pushed them in her efforts to tidy the room before he came home. In silence, he removed them and took them through to the playroom; she could hear the staccato sounds of his irritated sorting of bricks, beads, pieces of Lego and small wheeled objects. Later, he went next door to have a drink with the Talbots. There wouldn't be toys under Fiona's sofa.

  By the next day she was again waiting hopefully for the telephone. It rang twice; the first caller decided the bus routes were not convenient. The second said she was Mrs Porch, and she would like to call this afternoon.

  Mrs Porch arrived precisely at the time she had suggested. Jenny watched her from the sitting-room window, shutting the garden gate carefully behind her and walking up the path, pausing only to take an appreciative sniff at one of Henry's roses. Jenny felt a mixture of relief and apprehension. At least she was not old – one of her fears had been the embarrassment of someone middle-aged, old even, slaving away to do the work that she, Jenny, should be capable of doing herself. But this woman, though older than herself, was only in her later thirties or early forties. On the other hand, she looked disconcertingly brisk and competent, potentially critical.

  Jenny opened the door. Mrs Porch said, ‘Mrs Taylor? I'm Mrs Porch – about the job.’

  Jenny, confused, found herself blushing and talking incoherently. She had rehearsed this moment: now, it was Mrs Porch who led the way into the sitting-room, looked round for somewhere to put her coat, sat down after a moment and said, ‘They're nice, these houses, aren't they? Have you been here long, Mrs Taylor?’

  They talked. She was a pleasant woman, easy. Jenny began to relax. She said, with diffidence, ‘It does seem a bit silly, needing help when the house really isn't very big. But the children are so – well, they do need such a lot of looking after, you know – and my husband does like things to be nice when he gets back in the evening.’

  Mrs Porch said, ‘Well, they do, don't they? It stands to reason – they've had a hard day, they want things ready for them, like. It's only natural.’ She didn't sound critical in any way, and leaned down to the baby, crawling around her feet, to say, ‘I don't think you ought to have that in your mouth, now, my love, ought you?’ She removed the button that the baby had been sucking (Henry's, the lost one from his office suit, so that was where …) and put it on the table, diverting the baby with a pencil from her handbag. Emma sidled through the door and Mrs Porch said, ‘Hello, dear. What's your name, then? How old is she, Mrs Taylor – threeish?’

  ‘Three next month.’

  ‘It's a difficult age. You can't take your eyes off them for long. And the baby's into everything, I don't doubt. You've got your hands full.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Jenny gratefully. ‘Honestly, some days I get so tired. I know it's silly, lots of other people seem to manage so much better, but …’

  ‘Oh, my goodness, you're not the only one. You can feel at the end of your tether, one way and another. When mine were this age there were times when I'd have willingly upped and walked out of the house.’ It didn't seem likely, but Jenny was glad to hear her say so. She was just going to suggest showing Mrs Porch round when Emma lurched into the low coffee table and knocked over the vase of roses.

  ‘Oh, Emma …’ said Jenny. ‘Oh, dear …’ She began desperately stuffing the roses back, dabbing at the spilled water with a wad of Kleenex from her pocket.

  ‘Let me,’ said Mrs Porch. ‘You want to be careful with those polished surfaces, they spot so easily with a drop of water. Where's the kitchen? You come along and show me, dear.’ She took Emma by the hand and left the room, returning a moment later with basin and cloth. ‘There we are – a wipe over with a duster and he'll never know. You pick up the flowers, now, Emma – mind the prickles, though. That's a nice table, Mrs Taylor.’

  ‘It was a wedding present from my husband's aunt. I think it's antique. My husband's awfully fond of it.’

  ‘I don't wonder. It's a lovely piece.’ Mrs Porch wrung the cloth out with strong, freckled hands. ‘There, now you run and find me the polish and a duster, Emma, there's a good girl. You've not been married all that long, then, I daresay?’

  Jenny found herself telling Mrs Porch about one thing and another. About the wedding and about how frightened she'd been of doing something silly and making Henry cross, because she'd been ill on and off before (she didn't explain what kind of illness, but Mrs Porch nodded sympathetically) and about how nervous Henry's mother made her, being such a different sort of person, so busy and competent, running that enormous house and all those committees and things. Mrs Porch made reassuring remarks about everyone having their weak spots, and no one being perfect, and so forth. She seemed quite interested in Henry's parents, and indeed it turned out she'd been to the house once, one of the days the garden was open to the public. ‘Must cost a lot to run, that place. I daresay they've got some lovely things there. Your
husband the only son, is he?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jenny vaguely. Mrs Porch was busy admiring the silver tea-set that had been Henry's mother's wedding-present. It badly needed polishing, Jenny saw with guilt. But all she could think of now was the need to make a favourable impression on Mrs Porch.

  They toured the house. In the kitchen, Mrs Porch hung the cloth up to dry, put away the basin. At the same time she rinsed out a couple of dirty milk bottles and emptied the sink basket. Jenny said, ‘Oh, please … You mustn't bother.’ And Mrs Porch, popping the milk bottles outside the back door, said that she believed in doing things as you went along, and then you didn't have everything piling up on you, did you? Upstairs, Jenny felt her eye on the rimmed bath, Emma's unmade bed, the clouded windows, and grew confused again, hastily picking things up, trying to put clothes in piles. ‘You can't expect them to clear up, can you, at that age?’ said Mrs Porch. ‘Bless them. And your husband's just as bad, I daresay – I've never known a man hang his own trousers up. My husband's the same – I say to Bob, if I had a pound note for every time I've folded a pair of trousers of yours, I'd be in clover by now. Here, shall I do that …’ She put Henry's tweed jacket in the cupboard, and stood for a moment, looking. ‘I can see he likes things nice, Mr Taylor.’

  When she left they had arranged that she should start on Monday. Jenny could hardly believe her luck: she wandered around for a while in a daze of contented anticipation and then remembered that the delicate subject of money had not been raised. At least, Mrs Porch had said at one point, ‘The usual rate will do all right, Mrs Taylor’, but Jenny, too preoccupied by her relief that all was well and she had been accepted, had not followed this up by asking what the usual rate was. She would have to go next door and ask Fiona Talbot, who would be certain to know: Fiona knew about everything.

  The very fact that she was able to decide to call on Fiona, and then do so without hesitation, was an indication of her mood. It wasn't that Fiona was not welcoming: far from it, she was never put out, too busy, caught in a dressing-gown, or in the bath, or washing her hair. She was always crisply dressed – jeans clean and pressed, shirts and smocks fresh and new – her hair tidy, her house spruce but comfortable-looking, her children playing happily in airy, swept rooms with good quality educational toys. They had startlingly large vocabularies for such young children, though Fiona insisted that of course she and Tim didn't believe in pushing them, they must go at their own pace. They never had runny noses, either, and did not seem to whine like Emma …

  Jenny thought of all this as she went down her own garden path, and up Fiona's. No, it wasn't that Fiona was unwelcoming. It was just that she didn't seem to need company very much; or perhaps that she didn't much care for other women. She was polite, welcoming, and bored. She got on very well with Henry. When she and Tim came over – or when Henry and Jenny went to the Talbots – Fiona would talk a lot and make everyone laugh, or else get involved in long, serious arguments while Jenny sat silent. She had a degree and had had some rather important job in journalism before she got married. Jenny once asked her, timidly, if she did not get bored just being a housewife – she had had a couple of glasses of wine or she would never have dared.

  Fiona had said, ‘Good gracious, a degree isn't just a vocational training, is it? It furnishes the mind, and all that. Of course I'm not bored. I've got more time to myself than I've had for years.’ Jenny had felt crushed.

  She rang the bell. When Fiona came to the door, Jenny said, ‘I'm awfully sorry to bother you – I hope you weren't in the middle of something – it's just that I wondered if by any chance you knew how much one ought to pay for help nowadays.’

  Fiona said, ‘Psychiatric, or some other kind?’ Jenny was unpleasantly taken aback for a moment until she remembered that actually Fiona couldn't possibly know … It was a joke, obviously – one of Fiona's queer, dead-pan jokes that one didn't always follow – so Jenny laughed and said, ‘Oh, domestic, I meant.’

  ‘Never having used any I couldn't be quite certain,’ said Fiona. ‘But I believe the going rate is about sixty-five an hour. Scandalous, but that's the way it is.’

  Jenny wasn't quite sure who it was scandalous for, but since the Talbots were said by Henry to be rather left-wing, she decided it must be for the helps.

  Fiona said come in and have a cup of coffee, so she did. Emma and the baby, as usual, fell happily on the educational toys. Jenny and Fiona sat in Fiona's gay sitting-room and drank coffee made quickly and without fuss by Fiona at the same time as she smoked, talked, and sorted out the occasional squabble among the children with a quick redistribution of toys.

  ‘What do you want help for?’

  ‘I – well – I know it seems silly but things do get in such a mess and Henry does hate it so. It was his idea, but she seems awfully nice.’

  ‘Why shouldn't she be?’ said Fiona. ‘Sorry, I didn't mean to sound sharp. Have some more coffee?’ Her glance drifted to the open book on the table beside her: Jenny had the feeling that she was bored already. Presumably she had been reading the book. It was impossible to read the title upside-down, but the pages were all long chunks of text without conversation so it did not look like a novel. Most of the Talbots' books were rather new paperbacks, on politics and things like that: Henry often borrowed them.

  Jenny's mood of confidence had begun to evaporate. She could not think of anything more to say to Fiona. She would have liked to comment on the very attractive shirt she was wearing, or the new curtains, but felt that it would probably be wiser not to, as she had once heard Fiona be very amusing, but scathing, about women who discussed clothes and furnishings all the time. Emma, passionately acquisitive over one of the Talbot children's brightly-coloured, unbroken toys, snatched it away and hit the other child over the head with it. Jenny smacked Emma and met Fiona's coolly disapproving gaze across the weeping children. Fiona, she remembered too late, thought that there were really no situations with children that justified physical violence: one could always deal with things rationally and calmly. Fiona went into the kitchen to fetch biscuits with which to soothe everyone's ruffled feelings and Jenny sat uncomfortably. The trouble was that Fiona always reminded her of various particularly awful crises: the Christmas she forgot half the shopping and had to trail backwards and forwards to Fiona for three days to borrow bread, tea, sugar, potatoes. The time both the children had chicken-pox together and she was reduced to such a weeping, trembly state of nervous exhaustion that Fiona came over and coped till Henry came home. She'd heard them talking in the hall, later, Henry apologising, Fiona saying, ‘Good heavens, Henry, think nothing of it – some people just find it harder to manage than others, that's all there is to it.’ Jenny hadn't known then that both Fiona's children had been ill at the time. Henry liked Fiona very much: he had a special tone of voice when he was talking to her, that didn't seem to crop up with anyone else.

  It wasn't until she was back in her own house that Jenny remembered Mrs Porch again, and cheered up.

  Mrs Porch's first weeks were positively exciting. She transformed the house within three days. Pockets of dirt that Jenny had assumed to be ineradicable vanished; the bath and basins ceased to be slimy; mounds of dirty clothes disappeared and were found later in the airing-cupboard, washed and ironed. Jenny hadn't realised that the oven was meant to be that nice grey-blue colour inside, or that you could get all those marks off the floor around the stove. Henry was delighted, and Jenny found herself getting undeserved credit. There were other advantages, too. The children loved Mrs Porch; when she was around they played more and cried less. She brought Jenny the occasional home-made pie or cake.

  ‘Oh, Mrs Porch, you mustn't …’

  ‘If you're making one you might as well make two, mightn't you?’

  On these occasions Jenny left extra money out, and hoped she was doing the right thing. The business of payment had filled her with embarrassment: it seemed so awful to hand over notes, just like that, so she had taken to putting the money discree
tly in an envelope which she left on the kitchen table on the appropriate days, from whence it duly disappeared, leaving their relationship untarnished.

  It was such a nice relationship. There had never been any need to tell Mrs Porch what to do. She just knew – far better than Jenny had, anyway. She thought of everything. She reminded Jenny of household shortages, prompted her to have the baby's second vaccination done, told her how to get the broken window repaired and noticed, in time, that Jenny had left Henry's good secateurs (birthday present from his mother …) out in the rain. She answered the telephone if Jenny was in the garden, posted the letters that Jenny had forgotten, turned out the larder. When the milkman rang the door bell during the baby's bath, as he invariably did, Mrs Porch called up the stairs, ‘Don't you bother coming down, dear. I'll settle up with him for you, shall I?’

  ‘Oh, you are an angel, Mrs Porch. My purse is in the top drawer of the dresser.’

  And at eleven they drank coffee together in the kitchen and Mrs Porch talked endlessly about her family, which was large, diffuse and unpredictable. It was like being plunged into a serial story: Jenny found herself looking forward to the daily episode.

  ‘What happened about your sister-in-law in the end, Mrs Porch?’

  ‘Well, she told Fred she wasn't having any more of that, and he knew what he could do, and she upped and off to her auntie's round the corner. And then, the next thing I knew, there was my mum coming tanking over on her bike to say …’

  Henry's mother, on her next visit, did not fail to observe the altered state of the house. She said she gathered Jenny had this awfully good woman now, and she'd better hang on to her. The tone in which she said it made Jenny faintly defensive: it sounded as though she doubted Jenny's capacity to do so, and Jenny found this annoying, because she was such friends with Mrs Porch, really friends she felt, and actually Henry's mother wasn't all that nice to her helps, she ordered them about and checked up on what they had been doing.