I sweep my rubber across the windows and it’s like looking into one of those cages at the zoo. All the cats milling around her legs and Mrs. Chorlwood chattering away to them like kids. She sits down in front of the telly – just knocks a few turds off a wing-back chair and sits down – and they’re all trying to get up on her lap the minute her arse has touched the chair. Trouble is they don’t look like cats to me. They seem more like rats. A living blanket of rats.
“Come back in a couple of months,” she says when she pays me. “I expect we’ll need you again then.”
But I don’t go back. I think about it sometimes and I can imagine her in that chair one afternoon, dropping off and not waking up again. And the cats and the birds waiting for their food; and no way of getting out and, after a while, nothing to eat. The telly going on the blink and being the only living thing in the house, flickering and chattering away. That’s the time the rats would hear the telly and nothing else and start sticking their noses out of their holes, and maybe that picture I saw through the window would be right. Mrs. Chorlwood with that living, twitching blanket on her lap … You can see why I didn’t go back, can’t you?
Earlier on I said that Dorothy was a pretty average sample of the kind of bird you have it away with on this caper. She wants a bit of company, a bit of a change and a bit of the other. Now that doesn’t mean there aren’t other kinds – any number of them – but at least once you’ve got to the point with them your problems are usually over. I mean, if it was any other way, there wouldn’t be any point would there? – or would there? You’d have to ask Mrs. Armstrong that because I was never able to. I could never ask her anything.
Mrs. Armstrong lived in one of those large detached houses in Nightingale Lane with a flight of steps going up to two Samson-size pillars which supported a balcony so they didn’t feel starved of a purpose in life. She is what my mother would call a handsome woman and definitely upper class in a way that puts the mockers on you. I mean, though she’s attractive you’d never think of trying it on with. her. It would be like wolf-whistling at the Queen Mother. She has an aristocratic hooter with a bend in it, piercing grey eyes and a very good figure for a woman of forty-plus, which is what I imagine she is. She’s a bit of a twinset and pearls type but her stuff always fits beautifully and she smells nice. I say all this but at the time I hardly noticed it, if you know what I mean. She was just the woman who opened the door and stepped to one side as I went through. As I remember, nothing at all happened the first time but when I next go round it’s in the afternoon and she asks me if I’d like some tea when I’ve finished. I say yes, thinking she means a cuppa, but when I come down she takes me into the front room where there is a trolley loaded with cakes and toast cut up into thin bits and a silver teapot and its friends. I look round for someone else but she waves me to sit down and starts filling a couple of cups. It’s not easy to park myself because the settee is one of those ones you either perch on the edge of or plunge down into and it takes me a bit of wriggling before I can get into a position to receive my cup.
“Two lumps?”
Mrs. A. drops them in with a pair of tongs as if they’re the final ingredient in a Doctor Frankenstein experiment. Since my experiences with Viv and Dorothy I’ve been quite at ease in this kind of situation but with Mrs. A. gazing past me out of the window my hands feel about eight sizes too large for the cup and I drop the spoon down the side of the settee. It’s the old upper class hypnotism I suppose. If she was Dorothy I’d be chattering away nineteen to the dozen. She has got nice legs though. I do notice that. She’s sitting on a pouf – a leather one, I hasten to add – and I can see quite a bit of them.
“I don’t think you’ve met my daughters.” She nods towards the mantelpiece and for a moment I expect to see them sitting up there. In fact, there’s one of those great leather wallets full of photos of everybody including the nursemaid’s dog, and beside it a very posed photograph of two birds holding bunches of flowers. They must have been bridesmaids or something. Anyway they are both lookers and I say so. Mrs. A. nods graciously but continues to avoid my eyes as if she might catch something from them.
“When they’re home,” she sighs, “it’s absolute bedlam. They are attractive, as you say and I have young men round here in droves.”
I’m not certain what a drove is but I imagine it’s one of those flash wop sports cars. Alright for some, I think to myself.
“Where are they now?” I say.
“Oh, Fiona’s nursing at Guys and Viccy is at Sussex – University, you know.”
I didn’t. I mean if she’d have said Manchester, should I have reckoned she played on the wing for United?
“Of course, these boys do lead to some unexpected problems. Very flattering, though.”
I nod understandingly and wonder what she is on about.
“Do you find older women attractive?”
I think of Marlene Dietrich and Mae West. I can never understand what all the fuss is about. I mean they are a bit past it, aren’t they?
“Up to a point,” I say. “I mean, within reason.”
“They’re not mine,” she says, indicating the photograph. “They’re by my late husband’s first marriage. I think she must have been rather an insecure woman. People who know her suggested she had a jealous nature and I think it’s carried over into the children.”
I accept another piece of toast and bite into it so the butter runs down my chin. Mrs. A. is still looking out of the window and doesn’t notice.
“I mean you’d think they’d be flattered if someone found their mother attractive, wouldn’t you?”
I don’t think so at all, in fact it seems a bit disgusting even Dad finding my Mum attractive; though that must have been a long time ago. I start to say something but Mrs. A. rabbits on.
“This Johnathan, I can’t even be certain that was his name. Anyway, he drinks too much at one of their terrible parties and we put him to bed. Poor boy, I know he’s always had a thing about me – I mean it’s perfectly natural, perfectly harmless. I’m trying to calm him down and Fiona comes in. Heavens, you should have heard the things that girl called me.
“She totally lost control of herself. It was so embarrassing. What everybody else thought, I’ve no idea. Poor Johnathan, he was the one I was worried about. He was so upset he never came near the house again – and you can’t blame him.” She takes the empty tea cup out of my hand and sits down next to me on the sofa tugging her skirt down towards her knees.
“Then there was Rollo. Now, he was a charming boy – absolutely charming. Much too good for Viccy. She treats him so badly it’s incredible. I think he turned to me because of it. At least one can be civil, can’t one, but young people today – I know everybody says it but it’s true – young people are so thoughtless, so ill-mannered, it really does upset me. Anyway, on this occasion they were playing tennis and Rollo falls and grazes his leg quite badly. Do you know, all Viccy can do is laugh at him? It really was so cruel. I was mortified. I took him up to the house to put something on his knee and made him lie down on this very sofa.” She pats it like an animal. “Now perhaps it was the brandy, or me in my tennis things – I don’t know what it was – anyway, poor Rollo suddenly becomes terribly affectionate – I mean you can’t blame him the way that girl treats him. I suppose I should have told him to behave himself, in fact I’m certain I did, but he was such a sweet boy. Nothing happened, of course, I wouldn’t have let it, but Viccy comes leaping through the door – she’s quite a big girl really – and the language. I don’t know where she heard words
