Thirteen Steps Down

were. They were woodworm. Papa used to say woodworm were as bad as termites, they could destroy a whole house. What was she to do?

Indecisively, she stood in the doorway, thinking once more of her letter. She would make one more attempt at it, perhaps telling him obliquely that no one should believe gossip-but surely she hadn't been the subject of gossip? She couldn't tell him not to believe his own eyes. There was a slight smell in the room she was sure hadn't been there when she last came in. She would have noticed it. Not a pleasant smell, far from it. Did woodworm smell? Perhaps. If it got worse, there was no doubt about it, she would have to get a man in, get those people who did something to floors and boards and furniture to banish the things.

When she had written her letter she would look them up in the phone book. There was something called the Yellow Pages, and though she had never opened it since it was left on herd oorstep, she would do so now.

Chapter 13

'Newfangled' was a word that figured predominantly in Gwendolen'svocabulary. She applied it to most things which, in another favorite phrase, had 'arrived on the scene' since the sixties. Computers were newfangled, as were CDs and the means of playing them, mobiles, answerphones, parking meters and clamping (though she enjoyed seeing a clamp on animproperly parked car), color photographs in newspapers, caloriesand diets, the disappearance of telegrams, and of course,the Internet. In respect of most innovations, she managed to ignore them. But the Yellow Pages was a book and with booksof any sort she was familiar. Papa used to say that if he were insome isolated place with no company and only the telephonedirectory to read, he would read that. Gwendolen wouldn't goquite so far, but she didn't find this directory of services as newfangled and incomprehensible as she had feared.

There were whole pages devoted to firms that treated woodworm.It was difficult to know which to select. Certainly not afacetiously named one, such as Zingy Zappers (Let Zingy Zapperszap your woodworm and dry rot) or anything commercialr industrial. Eventually she chose Woodrid, mainly because itwas near at hand in Kensal Green. This did nothing to mitigatethe horror of failing to get through to a live human voiceon the phone. She had to press key 1, then 2, did it wrong and had to begin all over again. After she'd got over these difficultiesshe was asked to press something called 'pound' and had to ask for an explanation. When there was no response fromthe automated voice to her inquiry she reasoned that since itwasn't a figure or a star it must be that thing that looked like acrooked portcullis. It was. She waited and waited while musicwas played, the kind of newfangled music that thumped out ofcars being driven by young men down her street on Saturdaynights. At last she was through but was told, to her dismay, thata 'representative will come and make a survey' two weeks and four 'working days' hence.

The phone call exhausted her and she had to lie down in the drawing room for a rest and half an hour's read of The Origin of Species. Olive was bringing her niece to tea. She had said both of them were on diets, but Gwendolen knew how seriously shes hould take that. It just made things more difficult, for they wouldn't want simply to drink tea but would expect calorie free crispbread, low-fat cake, or other newfangled nonsense. Besides, Gwendolen, who never put on weight no matter whatshe ate, liked something substantial for her tea. These people never thought what a lot of trouble they were causing others.

She and Stephen Reeves had so much in common. Therewas no reason to believe his tastes had changed. Gwendolen believed that people changed very little, only pretended to as part of a showing-off campaign. Stephen had loved his teas,sandwiches, and homemade cakes, especially her Victoria sponge. When they met again, would she be capable of makinga Victoria sponge for him? But the letter still had to be written,if not today, tomorrow or the next day. The more she thought about disabusing his mind of the impression he must have got of her, the more awkward it seemed to have to explain to a man how she hadn't had an abortion but was accompanying someone else who nearly had. And that itself might appear reprehensiblein his eyes.

Perhaps she could find a subtle way of doing it. She could begin practicing now and once more she took pen and paper.Dear Dr. Reeves… Why should the words 'illegal operation'even have to be used? Dear Dr. Reeves, I remembered something about our affection-no, that wasn't right, it had been more whatthey called a 'relationship' today-I remembered somethingabout our relationship, yours and mine, after I had posted my previousletter. That would do, that was quite good. And she hadn'tcalled him Dr. Reeves for a long time before they parted. DearStephen, After I had posted my previous letter I remembered something about our relationship, yours and mine, which had slipped my mind. The day before we met in your surgery where I went to consult you about a minor ailment … Should she put the date of that meeting? Perhaps not… about a minor ailment I did not comment on the fact that we had seen each other the day before. Shec ouldn't know that he had seen her, any more than she had seen him, he might have been miles away and his desertion of her due to some quite other cause. But, no, that couldn't be. He had loved her, she knew he had, no doubt continued to love her but felt, in the circumstances, that she would make an unsuitable wife for a medical practitioner. As indeed she would have if she had done what he thought she had.

She glanced up at the time and it gave her a shock. Olive,with or without her niece, would be here in an hour and she hadn't yet bought the cakes. She couldn't even be sure she had enough milk. This letter would have to wait till later or even until she had had a reply to the first one.

For all Olive had said about her niece's passion for old Londonbuildings, Hazel Akwaa showed little interest in St. BlaiseHouse. She turned out to be a quiet well-mannered woman who drank her tea and ate a plain biscuit in silence while Olive chattered. Olive wore black trousers with bell bottoms and ared sweater patterned with fir trees and people skiing, moresuitable for someone a third of her age, but her niece was in agray wool dress with a valuable-looking gold necklace. WhenOlive introduced her, Gwendolen had to ask her first to repeatthe surname, then to spell it, it was so outlandish, it soundedAfrican. Gwendolen knew her Rider Haggard from childhoodand thought she remembered a character from She or King 'Solomon's Mines called Akwaa. Surely Hazel whatever-her-name-had-been hadn't married an African?

'Would you like to see over the house?' Gwendolen asked when tea was over. 'There are rather a lot of stairs.'

She expected the woman to say she wouldn't let a little obstacle like stairs put her off, but Mrs. Akwaa looked far from enthusiastic. 'Not particularly, if you don't mind.'

'Oh, I don't mind. I can go up there whenever I choose, of course. I was going for your sake, Mrs. Akwaa.'

'Hazel, please. I can see this lovely room from where I'm sitting and I doubt if the rest of the house can be more beautiful than this.'

Gwendolen was mollified by this gracious remark. She decided to unbend a fraction. 'And where do you live?'

'Me? Oh, in Acton.'

'Really? 1 don't think I've ever been there. And how will you get home?' Gwendolen made it sound as if her guest livedin Cornwall and she wanted to get rid of her as soon as possible.'Not in an underground train, I trust? You take your life in your hands using those.'

'My daughter said she would come and fetch us at five-thirty. We shall all go back to my home for supper.'

'How nice. And would that be the paragon your aunt is always telling me about?'

'I don't know about 'paragon,' ' said Hazel Akwaa in nearly as cold a tone as Gwendolen's. 'I have only the one daughter. Her father and I think she's very special but we are her parents, after all. Would you mind telling me where your toilet is?

'Gwendolen smiled her tiny half-smile. 'The lavatory is on the first floor, the door facing you at the top of the first flight of stairs.'

She decided, in Hazel Akwaa's absence, to tell Olive about the woodworm. 'I have just been up there to examine it again. I've sent for Woodrid, but like all these firms today they mean to keep me waiting over a fortnight before they'll come. I don't suppose the floor will collapse in a fortnight.' She gave asmall humorless laugh. 'Do you