The Rise and Fall of a Domestic Diva Read online

  Margery smiledshe wasn’t sure what else to doand continued to smile as the woman disappeared into No. 21. She lookedMargery decidedlike the girlfriend of the landlord at the Fox and Hounds where Margery and her friend Edith had a spritzer on Fridaysand she was Lithuanian. Darren, the landlord, had intimated softly to Margery and Edith that Lithuanian girls really knew how to look after men.

  Edith always used to say that Robert would end up with someone like that. A Lithuanianor worsea Rastafarian. Margery wasn’t even sure if there were female Rastafarians, which made the insult even worse. Was Edith implying that Robert was gay? She’d got East Leeke library to order a biography of Haile Selassie in order to get to the bottom of the matter, and had been halfway through it when Edith informed herthrough pinched lipsthat her son, Andrew, was marrying a girl called Joy, who was Thai.

  Up until Joy, Edith and Margery’s friendship had a formula. It was understood that Edith had things and people in her life that Margerybringing up an illegitimate child alonewas expected to envy. That’s how their relationship had always worked, and Margery had put up with a lot from Edith over the years because Edith was all she had and her son, Andrew, all Robert had.

  Joy changed everything.

  Edith had been all the way to Thailand to visit her. Joy lived in a village with no running water, but they’d gone to a restaurant for Edith’s birthday where you paid for the glass and could then refill it with Coca-Cola as many times as you liked. Not that Edith liked Coca-Cola, butas she was quick to point outthat wasn’t the point.

  Edith said Andrew was going to buy Joy’s village and turn it into a tourist destinationthe Genuine Thai Experience. She also gave Margery some lurid and unasked-for details about Andrew and Joy’s sex life that Margery was unable to fathom how she’d come by. None of this sex and commerce, however, detracted from the factas far as Margery was concernedthat Andrew had married a mailorder Thai bride because he couldn’t get himself a decent English girl.

  Since their sons’ respective marriages, the balance of power had shifted in the relationship between Margery and Edith.

  While Margery might not exactly get on with Kate, Kate did at least speak English.

  ‘Do you like tea?’ a foreign voice called out from somewhere in the house behind her.

  ‘Tea?’ Martina asked her again, from the kitchen doorway this time.

  Margery nodded, shutting the front door tentatively behind her and staying where she was, listening to the clink of china in the kitchen. So the au pair knew how to make her way round the kitchen then; knew how to help herself.

  ‘Pleasetry this,’ Martina said, reappearing in the hallway and handing Margery a cup of scarlet-coloured tea.

  ‘What’s this?’ Margery asked, sniffing at it.

  ‘Raspberry. I drink it three times a day,’ Martina said.

  Margery had no intention of drinking the tea. Not after the article she’d read in CHAT last week about the cleaner who’d given an elderly woman like her a drink with a paralytic in it that had paralysed her from the neck down. Once the woman was paralysed, the cleaner performed an autopsy on her WHILE SHE WAS STILL ALIVE, filmed the whole thing and put it on the Internet. Nobody was catching Margery out like thatespecially not a communist. Nobody was performing an autopsy on Margery without her permission.

  She followed Martina back into the kitchen, noting the carrier bag on the bench with the box of tea bags inside that Martina must have brought with her.

  ‘You bought these all the way from Czechoslovakia with you?’ she asked, suspiciously

  ‘From Slovakiayes.’

  ‘You can get hold of that sort of thing there then?’

  ‘Of course,’ Martina said, lifting her cup. ‘You like?’

  Margery didn’t respond to this. ‘Did you have to queue a long time for the tea?’

  ‘For this tea? I don’t know. My mother bought it at the supermarket. There are always queues at the supermarket.’

  Margery put her cup of tea down on the kitchen surface. ‘You have supermarkets?’

  Martina nodded, blowing on her tea. ‘I take my mother in the car one time a week.’

  ‘Car?’

  ‘My caryes.’

  ‘You’ve got more than one?’

  ‘We have two.’

  A two-car familyand there was Robert having to either cycle to work or get the bus because Kate needed the car. Margery glared at Martina, as if her car, the Krasinovic’s second car, parked outside their block in Blac, was somehow denying the Hunter family their second car.

  At leastas she discovered several minutes laterall the Krasinovic family lived in a flat; unheated, she presumed, until Martina set her straight on this as well, informing her that the Krasinovic apartment in Blac not only had central heating, but double glazing as well.

  Margery’s eyes skidded, mortified, over the rotting, peeling sash windows in the Hunter’s kitchen that Kate refused to replace with new uPVC double glazingnot even after one of Margery’s insurance policies came off and she offered to pay for the double glazing herself.

  Presuming the conversation over, Martina retrieved the Carry-It-All that Margery had bought Kate at Christmas from the cupboard under the sink. The Carry-It-All was a turquoise plastic container with a handle that you could use to transport your cleaning arsenal round the house.

  Margery had a lilac one at homewhich she had ordered from the Bettaware catalogue along with Kate’sand it gave her a huge amount of pleasure, on a Monday morning, to make her way round her East Leeke bungalow with it. It was dishwasher proof as wellsomething she’d pointed out to Kate when Kate hadn’t shown quite the right amount of enthusiasm or appreciation of the carefully chosen Carry-It-All. ‘It’s dishwasher proof,’ she’d said, pointedly, and Kate had given her that lopsided grimace she thought passed for a smile, followed by that look she put onlike she was the only person on the planet who’d ever had to forsake their dreams.

  Margery found the Carry-It-All at the beginning of this visit, at the back of the cupboard under the sinkwhere Kate had thrown iton its side with part of its handle discoloured where bleach had dripped onto it. Its abandonment felt more intentional than careless and this fact had moved her almost to tears when she’d discovered it on her first morning here, in an empty house. She’d since washed it, replenished it with a selection of cleaning products bought with her own money, and left it at the front of the cupboard.

  Someone was talking to her. She’d got lost in herself again and hadn’t heard; one day she’d get lost in herself and never come back and Robert and Kate and the children would put her in a place that smelt perpetually of food nobody could remember eatinglike that place her and Edith went to visit Rose in when Rose came down with Alzheimer’s.

  ‘What’s that, dear?’ she said to Martina. The ‘dear’ surprised her, had slipped through usually tight lips without her even thinking about it. She said it sometimes, to waitresses when she was out with Edith, or to young cashiers at the Co-op. She only ever said it to strangers, and it always caught her unawares.

  Whether Martina understood the endearment or not, her face lost some of its wariness.

  ‘I must clean now,’ she said, the Carry-It-All in her hand.

  ‘Yes,’ Margery agreed vaguely, suddenly shouting, ‘wait!’ Martina was going upstairs to clean. What if she’d forgotten to flush the loo? She pushed upstairs ahead of the au pair, breathing heavily, until she was standing, panting while staring down the toilet bowl. She had flushed the loo, but flushed it again anyway for good measure. Watching the flush, she thought fondly of the streams of luminescent blue that flooded her toilet at home as the flush passed through her new toilet bloc, clipped to the rim. She thought about how she’d stood in the new ASDA store where the mobility bus dropped her off and debated for at least five minutes over whether to choose the green or blue toilet bloc. There was nothing so colourful about the flush at No. 22 Prendergast Road; nothing to wipe away the memory of necessity.

  For a
moment Margery forgot what she was doing up in the bathroom, staring down the loo, then at the tread on the stairs, she remembered. They really were going to put her in that place alongside Alzheimer’s Rose if this didn’t stop.

  Chapter 3

  Kate pulled up slowly in front of Village Montessori, checking to see if cars belonging to anybody she knew were parked in the nursery’s vicinity. Seeing Evie’s, she drove round the block slowly twice and after the second lap saw the tail end of the black Chrysler disappear into Hebron Road. It was safe.

  Fading out Findlay’s monologue on the death of one of the nursery chickens, which were kept in a hut in the playgroundbird flu?she moved swiftly through the security gate with Flo on her and Findlay behind her towards the nursery entrance, past the Welcome to our Nursery sign in French, German, Spanish, Hebrew, Welsh, Gaelic, Arabic, Chinese, and Urdu. On the wall next to this was a montage of photographs taken by Sebastian Salgado of child labourers in South American mines that parents were beginning to complain to the Management Committee about.

  ‘Red rooster’s eyes went yellow and mushy when she died, like inside a wasp when you squish it, and Sandy who does music and movement said it wasn’t a fox,’ Findlay carried on as he hung up his coat, then added, ‘Martina’s grandma did make a football out of a pig’s head and it’s true. I’ve seen the film.’

  Kate, who’d been on the verge of pushing him gently into the Butterfly Room, stopped. ‘Film?’

  ‘She’s got a film of it on her phone. Arthur,’ he yelled, then, turning back to Kate said, ‘is Arthur going to my new school?’

  ‘We don’t know what school Arthur’s going towhy don’t you ask him?’

  Findlay ran over to the Home Corner where Arthur was kneeling in front of the oven, removing a large green casserole pot that he’d put a Baby Annabel doll in earlier.

  ‘What school are you going to?’

  Kate waited.

  Arthur was about to respond when one of the nursery staff went up to Findlay and said loudly, ‘Shall we give this to Mummy?’ tugging pointedly at the mask on his head.

  Sighing, Findlay pulled it off and pushed it into Kate’s hand, turning his attention back to Arthur.

  ‘We need knives and forks,’ Arthur was saying, efficiently.

  ‘We have a no-masks policy at nursery,’ the woman said.

  ‘I forgot,’ Kate quickly apologised before virtually running along the corridor with Flo towards the Caterpillar Room, where she handed her over to her primary carer, Mary.

  She got back to the car without running into anybody else she knew, and checked her phone. There was an ecstatic message from Evie telling her that Aggie was ‘in’, an almost identical one from Ros re. Toby Granger, and a message from Harriet telling her in a strangely officious manner that Casper had won a placewon?and reminding her to bring a food contribution to that night’s PRC meeting. Kate hadn’t even given it a thought.

  She drove the car round the corner to Beulah Hill and parked outside the property Jessica had told her about. The house had nets up at windows painted peach, and a dead laurel in the front garden. She got the letter out of her breast pocket and read it again, just to see if anything had changed since she put it in there. She reached the Yours sincerely, Jade JacksonHead of Admissions at the end. Nothing had changed. She felt, irrationally, that Findlay not being offered a place at St Anthony’s had something to do with Jade Jackson being Jamaican.

  We are writing to inform you of the outcome of your application for a Southwark primary school. Your child has been offered a place at Brunton Park. The school will be contacting you with further information shortly….

  She watched a pit-bull urinate against the tree on the other side of the window, then tried phoning the Admissions line, knowing how hopeless it would be trying to get through on the day all the offers had gone out. She listened to the engaged tone until she was automatically disconnected, then tried phoning St Anthony’s instead, eventually getting through to a woman who told her the school was once again oversubscribed and how this year more than twenty-five places had gone to siblings.

  The woman cut her off before Kate even got round to telling her that they attended St Anthony’s Church every Sundayevery Sundayor asking whether the school had definitely received the Reverend Walker’s letter confirming this.

  She pushed her head back roughly against the car seat and tried phoning Robert, who didn’t answer, so sat contemplating No. 8 Beulah Hill instead. She was going to be late for her first appointment, and didn’t care.

  Chapter 4

  At No. 22 Prendergast Road, Margery stood listening to Martina clean the bathrooms, then went back into the kitchen, humming a Max Bygraves song to herself as she started on the pastry for the corned beef and onion pie she’d decided to make for Robert’s tea that night. She watched her fingers lightly pull the mixture together in the way she’d been taught as a girl by her grandmother, who went mad playing the organ, and thought of all the different kitchens she’d watched her fingers do this in over the years, and how the fingers had changedgrown lines, knobbles, arthritic twists and turns and finally gone all loose; so loose that the few rings she had would probably have already fallen off if they hadn’t got caught in the loose folds of skin round the knuckles.

  The litany of industrious sounds coming from upstairs comforted Margery as she rolled the pastry and lined the pie tinCommunists certainly knew how to clean. When she went to wash her hands, she saw the envelope Kate had left for Martina on the surface by the sink. She went into the hallway and listened. Martina had just started hoovering. Margery went into the lounge and took another envelope out of Robert’s desk drawerit wasn’t actually Robert’s desk, it was Kate’s, but Margery always referred to it as Robert’sand went back into the kitchen.

  She quickly tore open Martina’s pay packet and pulled out a twenty-pound note. She stood there for a moment, brushing flour off her nostrils with the crisp new note and knew that, according to her calculations, there was no way Kate and Robert could stretch to eighty pounds a month on a cleaner. Margery knew the Hunters’ finances as well as any accountant because she’d spent the better part of yesterday morning going through their two fiscal files. The Hunters were, in her opinion, in dire straitsshe didn’t know how they kept the show up and running or why they weren’t collapsing under the strain of their imminent financial ruin. She could only surmise that Robert was keeping it from Kate and bearing the burden alone. She didn’t understand her son’s marriage. It seemed unnatural to her; more important still, it was unsustainable. What was it Robert said to her all those years ago: ‘Wait till you meet her, Mumshe’s going to change the worldnot just mine; everyone’s. Kofi Annan beware.’

  Well, personal finances were clearly below the likes of Kofi Annan, but Margery knew bailiffshad had experience of bailiffs throughout her childhood, and she could smell them in the air now. Kofi Annan or not, when it was time they came for you and nothing could keep them from the door. They went where they were sent and didn’t discriminate. Margery stuffed the twenty-pound note into the new envelope as the hoover cut out upstairs, put it back on the bench by the cooker and opened two cans of corned beef that she’d bought with her from East Leeke. When she turned round, Ivan the cat was standing motionless on the kitchen floor, watching her, its back arched. She felt immediately nauseous; cats always made her feel nauseous. They brought her underarms out in a rash and gave her vertigo.

  Then the phone started to ring in the lounge and she wasn’t sure what to do about it because Ivan showed no sign of moving, was in fact now sending out a hissing spit in her general direction. Even without Ivan, the phone alarmed her with its flashing lights and antennae.

  ‘You want me to get?’ Martina called out from the upstairs landing.

  At the sound of Martina’s voice, Ivan relaxed and strolled past Margery towards his bowl, brushing her ankles.

  Margery jogged quickly into the lounge and started to wrestle with the still ringing phone, ev
entually pressing the right buttonbecause it might be Robert; it might always be Robert…

  It was Beatrice, Kate’s mother.

  ‘Margeryhow are you? I had no idea you were in town.’

  Town? What town? ‘The cleaner’s here,’ Margery said, for no particular reason.

  ‘That’s nice,’ Beatrice said after a while.

  So the cleaner was news to Beatrice as well. Margery relaxed a little. ‘She’s from Czechoslovakia,’ she explained.

  On the other end of the phone Beatrice, unsure why they were talking about the cleaner, said briskly, ‘There’s no such place.’

  Margery baulked. ‘What?’

  ‘There’s the Czech Republic and Slovakia, but no Czechoslovakia.’

  ‘Martina never said,’ Margery carried on, more to herself than Beatrice, ‘but they were Communists?’

  ‘While the Soviet Union was still in poweryes.’

  ‘I was going to ask her if she had any KGB stories.’

  ‘KGB?’

  ‘You knowthe KGBthe secret police.’ Margery had withdrawn an abundance of material on the Gestapo and KGB from East Leeke Library’s well-stocked history section.

  ‘You must of heard about the KGB, Beatricehow they used to come in the night while you were asleep,’ Margery carried on, breathless. ‘The footsteps on the stairs, down the hallway…knocking on doors, doors opening…people disappearing.’ She paused. ‘They came in the night,’ she said again, insisting on this.

  After a while, Beatrice said lightly, ‘So does Freddie Kruger.’

  ‘He sounds Germanwas Czechoslovakia covered by the Stasi?’ Margery asked, interested.

  ‘Margery,’ Beatrice reined her in. ‘How long are you staying for?’

  This brought Margery up short. Always sensitive to any hint of expulsion or the fact that she was outstaying her welcome, she said quickly, ‘Not longit’s just while I’ve got the decorators in.’

  ‘What colour?’ Beatrice asked. She’d been to Margery’s East Leeke bungalow oncewhen Kate and Robert got marriedand the only place she’d ever been to before that bore even the slightest semblance to the bungalow in terms of décor and overall atmosphere was a euthanasia clinic on Denmark’s Jutland coast.