Gran a tin of Lily of the Valley talcum powder from the Co-op for every birthday and Christmas. On the front of the yellow tin was a spray of dark green leaves with drooping delicate white flowers. Joan had thought it was the height of classiness. Gran’s name was Lily and she used to pull the front of her dress forward and shake the talc down her chest, saying, ‘Lily by name and Lily by smell!’ Then she’d tell Joan that she would be the most perfumed lady at the opera which would set her granddaughter giggling as Gran never went anywhere except to the whist drive. When Gran died and Joan was sorting her clothes, drifts of the snowy powder crept from the seams of her dresses and the perfume was all around her. Inhaling the scent of the soap took her right back to their dark little bedroom in Bromley with the gentleman’s oak wardrobe and the commode disguised as a chair. If Joan thought that she detected any omens that day, finding the Lily of the Valley seemed a good one. Then she gave herself a shake; she wasn’t being paid to stand and daydream.
She spent a good hour cleaning without even touching the conservatory. By then it was getting near the time she had to be at Mr Warren’s, so she washed up Mrs Rawle’s dishes and arranged to come back at six-thirty to cook supper.
‘There’s food in the fridge for tonight,’ Nina Rawle said. ‘I prefer light meals, soups and soufflés, snacks on toast, that kind of thing. I’d like some fruit. Could you possibly pick up a cantaloupe for this evening?’
Joan had never heard of a cantaloupe but she supposed they would have one in the supermarket. As Nina Rawle gave her the money she yawned, eyes watering. ‘Do excuse me,’ she said, ‘I don’t sleep well at night so I snatch naps during the day. I’m ready for one now.’
‘I sleep badly sometimes,’ Joan told her, ‘I have worrying dreams. Have you tried sleeping tablets?’
Nina looked uneasy. ‘Yes, but I don’t like taking them. Maybe I’m anxious that I won’t wake up.’
Joan didn’t believe in encouraging that kind of talk. ‘You’re just a bit down,’ she told Nina. ‘Try and get some rest and things will look brighter. Meeting someone new takes it out of you.’
Mrs Rawle gave another, fainter smile. ‘Oh, you haven’t tired me. I think we’ll get on, don’t you?’
Joan picked up her bag. ‘I speak as I find, and I think we can rub along very well, Mrs Rawle.’
‘We won’t stand on ceremony,’ came the reply. ‘You must call me Nina.’
‘Then you call me Joan.’
Nina Rawle was making her way carefully to the sofa as Joan left, leaning on her sticks, old before her time. She wore soft, Chinese-style slippers and the plastic soles made the lightest of taps on the floorboards, like a cat’s paws. There were only six years between them but there could have been twenty. Count your blessings, Joan told herself, heading for Bessie; you’ve got a good job and a neat little flat and Rich. She took a quick peek at the photo she kept inside her purse before starting the engine. Mr Marshall had kindly taken a snap of her and Rich with her own Instamatic. When Alice saw it she said they looked like peas in a pod because they both had round faces and Rich’s hair was the same shape, square-cut and layered. He came out quite blond in the photo although when you saw him in person there was a tiny bit of grey at the sides. Joan had warned him, as soon as she had her hands on him she’d tint that out. Mr Marshall laughed when he heard that and said could Joan pop in and do his for him sometime?
Sitting there outside Nina Rawle’s flat Joan thought that you met some good people in this world: Mr Marshall had been kind to Rich and of course Alice had been a brick about the whole thing. On the other hand, Mr Warren, the client she was about to see, was a real moaner; never a please or thank you but always quick to criticise if everything wasn’t just so. She gave Rich a kiss and tucked him away. There were another three days to go before she’d see him again but one of the advantages of having such involving work was that it made time fly.
Joan spent the first week with Nina Rawle helping her to get her flat organised. Nina didn’t want to be taken out anywhere; she said she’d rather concentrate on ridding the place of the stacked cardboard boxes. She could do very little herself. The least exertion tired her. By the time Joan arrived each morning at nine she’d showered but the energy she had expended left her exhausted for an hour afterwards. Her hair never looked quite clean and at times Joan could see a sticky crust of lather on the crown of her head. Joan wondered about offering to help her in the bathroom but Nina had a reserve that made her think better of it.
While Nina sat reading the paper or listening to music or the radio Joan prepared her breakfast. She liked a small bowl of muesli or a poached egg on toast and fresh fruit; a segment of melon or a peeled orange or grapes. Joan had never come across this eating fruit for breakfast before; to her, fruit was for puddings or for when she was watching her weight and then she ate apples. For evening meals Nina requested blended home-made soups, pieces of chicken or fish with steamed vegetables or cheese or tomato soufflé followed by more fruit. She liked two glasses of wine in the evenings, French or Australian red from the rack in the kitchen. She invited Joan to have a glass, too, but it wasn’t to her liking. If Joan drank wine she chose a sparkling sweet variety; Lambrusco was her favourite: those bubbles tingling on her tongue spelled luxury.
At first, Joan found the shopping nerve-wracking. Nina’s list sent her searching for star fruit, lychees, artichokes, smoked applewood and goat’s cheeses, Greek olives, red snapper and lemongrass. Joan had never taken much interest in cooking and, as most of her clients were old, they liked the kinds of dishes her gran had preferred: tinned steak-and-kidney pies with mushy peas, jellied eels, liver and bacon with a thick cornflour gravy, sausage and mash and shepherd’s pie. They were meals she could make with her eyes closed.
She felt anxious for the first few days, examining the produce at the delicatessen counter in the supermarket, but there was a kind, motherly woman there who helped her out. Joan explained that she wasn’t used to this sort of shopping; with me, she said, it’s a quick whip-round for a jar of coffee, a couple of ready dinners, a boxed pizza and a packet of frozen peas. The assistant laughed, tucking a straying hair under her cap and told Joan that she could hardly keep up herself with the new lines they were always introducing. They had to have what was called familiarisation, she revealed; sessions with the section manager where they learned about the product and how to pronounce its name. When she was a young housewife you bought either Cheddar or Leicester cheese. Now it was Italian this and Norwegian that, soft and hard, pasteurised and unpasteurised and were we any the better off for it? Joan was reassured that she wasn’t the only one who’d never come across some of these alien foodstuffs.
It was years since she had been to a proper fishmonger’s. She used to go to the one in the High Street with Gran on Friday mornings to buy slabs of the waxy yellow haddock that she then poached in milk. Gran had stomach ulcers and ate a lot of what she called slop food: junkets, custards and milky sauces. One of her favourite dishes was fresh white bread squares sprinkled with sugar and steeped in warm milk with an egg whipped in. Nourishing, she called it. She used to feed that to Eddie, Joan’s brother, when his chest was bad but she never made it again after he’d gone. Joan couldn’t imagine what Nina Rawle would make of such a concoction. She specified the fish shop where she wanted Joan to buy the red snapper, salmon and trout she liked. The raw smell of the place made Joan gag; give me a boil-in-the-bag kipper any day, she thought, avoiding the staring cod eyes. The assistant who served her had wet chilled hands and his eyes bulged too. The right one had a cast, the pupil pale as if it had been bleached. She hurried in and out of there.
Nina
