A short story

I sit in my wooden-framed upholstered armchair.  It shows signs of wear but remains the most comfortable seat in my house, one no visitor would dare to occupy for fear of my reproaches, were there any visitors.  

The seat faces outwards towards the full-length French windows, permitting me an unimpeded view of my garden.  It is and could only ever be an English garden, rich and verdant, a blaze of colour the year round. 

My vantage point allows me to watch my gardener, James, a man seemingly as old as I, working on the flower beds.  James and I have been evolving the garden slowly into a riot of colours for maybe twenty years, such that I never need to tell him what goes where; we have an understanding.   When he is away or sick, I do become very irate with the temporary stand-ins, haranguing them constantly through the open doors.  It is one of my failings.

Today it is raining, such that everything is bleak and has the air of watercolours bleeding and blurring.  I hate the rain.

My housekeeper Emily brings me a pot of tea at this time every day. Emily is perhaps in her late 40s and a frustrated musician.  As she carries the tray she sweeps wistfully past the baby grand piano that sits to one side of the library.  I never encourage her to play.  It is, I suppose, an act of cruelty and denial on my part.  

That privilege was left to Juliet.  She used to play the Appassionata, many years ago.  How glorious the sound of the allegro assai, at first moody and cautious, then breaking into crashing chords in Beethoven’s burning rage.  Passionate indeed, a passion to be summoned up in youth and which smoulders unseen in old age.  

I loved to play the piano when I was young but have not done so for many years, in fact I prefer silence nowadays.  The piano needs tuning anyway. To my ears it sounds ghastly when I hit middle C.

The transaction with Emily is fulfilled in the same fashion every teatime.  The tray is placed with delicate precision on the ornate Victorian inlaid mahogany pedestal tea table, and always with the same warning to be careful not to knock it over; I never do.  With fastidious care Emily pours the milk, then the tea, Earl Grey, into my porcelain cup. I believe tea always tastes far better in a proper china cup.  

Every day I have a sweet bread or a cake, delicately sliced and placed on a matching china side plate.  Today she has brought me two slender slices of homemade malt loaf.  I only have the cook to shop for food and make dinner now, so it is an act of kindness by Emily to make a sweet treat for me in her own time.  Despite my crochety high-handedness, Emily is a selfless, caring individual, the sort that you’d have thought died out years ago.  I will remember her in my will.

When I am not looking out into the deluge, I prefer my chair to point the other direction, all the better to be comforted by the sight of the beautifully arranged books on the many yards of shelving installed over sixty years ago by my father.  Many of the volumes he acquired when grand old houses were sold off and their contents were auctioned in lots to fund death duties.  It was not unusual for him to return home bearing boxes of intricately crafted works of the bookbinder’s art.  He was as fascinated by this technical delight as he was by the glorious words and pictures within.  My siblings and I would find the right places for the books to go, and seldom have they moved far since those days.  

Over the years, as my brothers and my sister got married and moved away, I made it my duty to read each and every book in the library; and when I had finished, I started again from the beginning, all the better to reinterpret those tomes as if down the wrong end of a telescope, the joy and thirst for learning I possessed in childhood seeming ever more distant.  Sometimes I pick one randomly and leaf through the creamy pages and appreciate the luscious texture, but in the faded grandeur of this room the books make me feel sad.  They conjure up only ghosts.

The library is still my favourite room in the house.  I rarely go anywhere else.  The dining room for sure, the bathroom, my bedroom, that’s about it, though Emily dutifully cleans them all.  I never liked the salon, as my mother called it.  It is too big, too draughty now, not a warm and snug room.  It was the mirrors I feared years ago, but they have long since been banished.

A few years ago my doctor, a greying man with a bushy moustache, told me I should sell it and move into a sheltered flat.  He told me developers would love to turn the old house into flats, and that it would earn me a pretty penny.  It had character, he said, they liked character.  It also had the grounds, and people always like space, far from the madding crowds.  

But, I told him, if they are going to live in flats cheek-by-jowl with their neighbours, that space is but an illusion.  I for one would not want to live in a flat, certainly not one without a proper English garden, and besides I would need help.  I could not live by myself.  

Nobody sees things from your perspective when you grow old, not even your contemporaries, those that are still alive.  The irony here is that I have outlived the doctor by some considerable margin.  I wish he could have lived long enough for me to gain the last word: “Physician, heal thyself.”  That would have been satisfying.

He died of a stroke soon after retiring to his yellow cottage in the village.  He used to tell me about it at length, his pride and joy along with the old Mercedes he cherished.  His wife came to tea on occasions after he died.  I do believe she was lonely and felt I of all people would enjoy talking about him.  I tolerated those visits but had no desire to talk about the old fool.  

The new doctor is far better.  His family came from Bangladesh in the early 1970s, before he was born.  He drops by once a week, listens to me and does not judge, though there is not much he could say anyway.  I doubt there is anything the medical fraternity could or would do for me now, even if I permitted them to conduct their evil craft on my frail and feeble body. Like Emily, I believe my new doctor cares, and I value his kindness more highly than the latest treatments.

I shall die in this house, probably in my sleep.  Emily will find me when she brings my morning pot of tea.  I will not be a great loss.  I doubt anyone will miss me.  Emily, the gardener and the doctor will be the only attendees at my funeral.  My family won’t come, I know they won’t.  It is all too late now, but I know what they will say about me.  I want flowers from my cottage garden, geraniums and foxgloves.  And some wild flowers too.  

I want to be thought of as a free spirit, but I doubt anyone else will share that view.

***

Awaking with a jolt, I see the light has faded and the gardener will have long since finished for the day.  

My tea, half-finished, is cold.  Emily enters, switches on the light, closes the curtains and takes my tray. She says nothing but brushes my arm with her hand as she picks up the tray.  It was deliberate.  She knows how grouchy I can be when I wake up, and besides she wants to check that I am still warm before she goes home to her family.  

Nobody has servants nowadays, not the sort that live in-house.  There were very few even in my childhood between the wars, though to my mother they were the last remnants of civilisation.  Her attitude was snobbish and I hated it then, but I have never managed this house on my own. Maybe the doctor was right, I should have got a flat and had supermarket deliveries, but that would have changed the habits of a lifetime.

I look at the old clock above the mantelpiece and see it has gone 5pm. The cook will be busy.  Dinner is prompt at 7.  In the old days one would change for dinner but when you dine alone there seems little point in maintaining the decorum and standards of the old days. 

I wish there were an open fire in the grate, just like the old days.  I keep meaning to ask Emily if she will make a fire for me.  It is a cold house so I wear layers, many of them.  Emily shivers and says I should get central heating.  She spends her time in the kitchen with the cook, warmed by the range, when she is not working.  In winter I am tempted to join them.

The cook is divorced and has children at university.  This I know because she often refers to them and how well they are doing.  She eats in the kitchen, the same food as me but she eats alone.  I have sometimes been tempted to ask her to join me, Emily too, but they would politely refuse, I know they would.

Emily thinks I should have a television for company.  What would be the point? I asked.  The people would not be listening to me, they would just be talking for the sake of talking.  You would find it entertaining, she would say, it’s a laugh.  Would I want laughter?  It is so undignified to laugh, not that anyone would see me. You could watch snooker, she would say, orEastEnders.  It’s such a good way to unwind!

No, I couldn’t bear to see EastEnders at one another’s throats.  I spend my time reliving memories, for whatever else anyone says about me my mind is sharp and clear.  I can remember back to when I was a year old, and how many people can say that?  As you age you have more time than you thought possible to remember the past, so you don’t want those precious memories clouded by the incessant drone from a box.  

In my mind, all those long dead people are alive and animated, full of delight.  They are better than actors or snooker players.  Pubs and clubs were never my thrill, they were the stuff of ordinary working folk.  

That makes me sound hoity-toity, but I am not.  I never believed myself to be a higher class than those who work for me; if anything I was always jealous of their lives and told them so.  Forget television, they knew how to have a good time, meet friends, have partners and children, to have useful and productive lives.  What have I done with my life?  What contribution have I made to society, what inventions and innovations have I made, what discoveries for the benefit of humanity?

I learned piano

I have been locked in the past my whole life, yet it seems to have flown by!  I never wanted childhood to end because adolescence marked the point where I became self-conscious. All teenagers become self-conscious, all the more since they are no longer bound by duty and self-discipline, but I was more than most, with good reason.  It is quite understandable that I should want to live in the time and place where I was happiest and not to face the rigours or challenges of modern living, not that I lay claim to understanding those to any degree.

So it is that I have remained cooped up in this house for almost ninety years, and never set foot beyond the boundaries of the garden. My school tutors came here to teach me, since I was deemed a weak child, not a hardy capable of taking to boarding school or taking up a profession or occupation.  My mother was a poet of sorts, so I followed in her footsteps and wrote a few verses.  They were published in a slim volume by an earnest man based in Cambridge but sold few copies. One of the few remaining copies sits on a high shelf near the door.  I have not opened it in forty years.

Nowadays I am even less adventurous and watch the garden from the library.  I know one of my brothers travelled; he was a sort of English Hemmingway, game for any adventure.  Henry was born in the wrong time, he would have been a great colonialist, back in the day. He sent postcards and letters from Egypt and India and China and Canada and Australia.  The sunshine looked heavenly!  He said I should join him, but he knew full well that would be impossible.  He is dead too, he died young from too much good living, I expect.

I’m fully aware of my family, of my nieces and nephews, of their children, of their grandchildren.  And they were always aware of me but never wanted to visit.  They found the house cold and spooky, but it was me they were scared of.  Not merely that they found my company unwelcome, not at all. No, they were terrified of me.  When the nieces and nephews were young their parents would bring them back to the old house for visits, but their offspring would burst into tears when confronted with their ogre of a relative.  If I smiled they were convinced I would eat them alive, so vicious were my fangs. When they departed I cried a few solitary tears and did not invite them again.  Instead, I waited for the parents to suggest a visit, which they did with increasing rarity, and then never came at all.

I never had time for children, certainly none of my own. If I had, maybe my children would have understood, would have accepted me for who I was and who I am.  When I am not remembering childhood, I am wondering what parallel existence I might have had, had I not been the person I am, what I might have done, who I might have met, how things might have turned out differently.  For that to have worked, I would need to have changed myself, and change is not who I am, it never was.  It is entirely a hypothetical thought; one I would not have tested because it would never have occurred to me.

I call for Emily but she does not reply.  She did not even say goodbye, which she always does. I shall have to have words with the girl, not that she is anyone’s idea of a girl.  The cook will be working in the kitchen.  I must ask her what is for dinner, but that involves standing very slowly, gathering two walking sticks and moving in slow motion towards the door. I should be employing round-the-clock carers now, but that seems so indulgent when one can move, with some effort, rheumatics notwithstanding.

To elevate myself and lean on the sticks causes a jolt of pain, but you become familiar with pain in age.  I drag one foot forward, then shuffle the other along, barely leaving the ground.  Would that I could still skip along with barely a thought.

It is a long slow process, but to get to the door gives me a feeling of immense satisfaction.  It is the little things that please. 

The door is solid and engraved, it opens and hits the rubber stopper on the wall with a good thump.  I don’t know my own strength.

I call the cook’s name.  Her name is Margaret, a solid old-fashioned name.  She does not respond, but then she will be concentrating on the preparation and quite possibly wearing one of those headsets for piping music.  I never saw the point when you can’t concentrate on the music, but it seems I am in a minority there.

With a stirring effort, I walk across the hall and towards the kitchen, each step more painful than the last.  I try again to summon up the cook, but she is not to be beckoned. Gripping the door knob between arthritic fingers I turn it sharply to the left.  The knob obediently clicks into place, allowing the kitchen door to creak inwards.  I peer into what Emily calls an old-fashioned kitchen with old-fashioned cupboards. Beyond there is a larder and a scullery, but my eyes are on the cook.  

She sits in a wooden chair with her stockinged feet raised on the airing bar of the range.  The tinny music is quite audible from the headphones drooping from her ears. She is dancing in her chair and singing along to the song.  She holds a face powder compact with a small built-in mirror and is doing her face as if she were about to depart on a date, despite her apron.  

On the table behind her stand two packs of a supermarket convenience dinner and two plates, on to which the processed food would have been served and passed off as her own handiwork.  I can forgive many things but this?  All the bills for ingredients from the butcher and greengrocer and fishmonger were all lies.  Nobody, nobody takes me for a fool!

Margaret catches sight of me in her compact mirror and jerks in her seat, which comes crashing down to the tiled floor. Margaret wriggles from this indecorous posture and stands guiltily, facing me with her hands behind her back. The canned music continues from the floor.

“Turn that racket off!” I rasp at her.  Without a word she complies.

“You’re fired!” I bellow in a voice dripping with contempt.

“But…” she begins, but stops, knowing it is useless to object.

With a grim expression, Margaret takes off her pinny, picks up her music and throws it in her handback, further down the table, collects her coat and departs through the kitchen door, leaving what passes for food in this pre-packaged era sitting there, mocking me in silence.

With a roar of rage I use one walking stick to swipe at the packages.  One hits the wall and bursts open; the other flops upside down on the floor.

I look down towards where it landed and spot Margaret’s small, pink compact lying nearby, forgotten in her haste.  The kitchen lights glare in the mirror.  With no little effort, I bend down and pick it from the floor, flopping on to the nearest seat in order to inspect this plastic trinket.  I have not used makeup since I was a teenager, so why a cook should want it while working I have not the faintest idea.

Clamping shut the shell I look at the exterior with disdain. I am tempted to throw this plastic and smash it, but I know that powder would fly everywhere. It would make more sense to slip it in the nearest waste bin and contact Emily to see if bringing in some dinner is possible, but I am aware of my own state of heightened emotion, and I am aware why I am in this state.

With trembling fingers I open the compact and examine what I see: a well-used trough containing sandy-coloured powder, topped with a puff with which to apply it.  And above, a small round mirror, speckled with powder.  

Barely able to keep tears from flowing, I raise the mirror and look at my face.  The twisted, distorted mess of features stares back at me.  Small wonder my parents rejected me, my siblings tried to leave me out, why nobody wants to visit me.  I am not lonely through choice, only because I am naturally hideous, and people only want beauty.  I do not want to be called the elephant woman ever again.

Using my sticks for leverage, I raise myself to my feet and discard the compact.  With no little exertion, I make my way back towards the library.  

I think it is time to play the piano again.  Yes, definitely, a sonata, Beethoven of course. The Appassionata, first movement.  That is the one.