“Nothing, of course. You can do nothing. You couldn’t possibly move into this house with me.”
“I live as near as I am able.”
“If you lived in this house, you could give up your job, as you’re pleased to call it. The child could have proper clothes instead of the extraordinary things I see her wearing every time I do see her –”
Susan, feeling the terrible eyes turn to her at last, flinched her own away, finding some sudden fascination with the worn Persian carpet under her feet.
“Mother, I’ve explained all this to you. I simply can’t throw everything up on a whim.”
“A whim? A whim? To be with your own mother?” There was neither anger nor pleading in the tone, scarcely, now, even any sarcasm. The old, unwhole voice, with its well-educated accent, was devoid of anything but clipped abrasion.
“I like my work,” said Susan’s mother crisply. “And I like a little independence. God knows, it’s a good thing I do.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“You know perfectly well what it means.”
“That you could not rely on me for help.”
Susan’s mother sat with lips of smooth coral stone.
The grandmother had twisted her lizard profile fully round into the room, her gaze fixed with a blind still ferocity on a row of china ornaments in the black hearth.
Susan put down her empty glass.
She got up, and edged away from the arena’s centre.
Absorbed now, they let her do it.
“Can I go and look at the books?” Susan whispered, too low to be heard.
They heard her.
Not glancing at her, the grandmother rapped, “You have only been here five minutes. If you want the lavatory, say so.”
“Then may I go to the lavatory?”
“Yes. Wash your hands afterwards.”
Humiliated beyond blushing, Susan left the room by another exit.
Along the passage, where other curious plants luxuriated in narrow winding spaces, Susan heard the voices still. “I have never asked you for anything.” “I have never refused you anything.” “There were always terms. Impossible ones.” Susan heard this conversation, or dialogues of the same kind, on most Sundays.
She opened the lavatory door and went in.
The lavatory was quite big, for what it was. The suite, if so it could be called, a dingy white, both toilet and bowl and hand basin verdigris-stained, with long hairs of cracks. The hot tap did not run hot, nor even warm. In winter, Susan had sometimes marvelled to find its issue felt colder than that of the cold tap.
Before drying her hands, Susan scooped a handful of water up on to the runner of the towel, to make it very wet, proving she had used it. But the water also sploshed on the floor by the don’t-say-toilet, making it look as if she had peed on the lino. So then she had to take some of the soft toilet paper and mop the floor, and then, to dispose of the paper, she had to flush the lavatory again. And if they heard all this, as they well might, or if the housekeeper heard it, her grandmother might later say to her that the lavatory was there for its ‘purpose’, and not to be played in. Or, worse, that Susan should have attended to her bowels before she left home.
Leaving the lavatory, Susan crept up a brief staircase and went along another corridor, and sidled into what her mother called the book-room.
Susan did not really like these books. She was averse to them. They were fairly uniformly sheathed in uninviting dark skins, and some had gilt lettering, and many were anyway out of her reach. Long ago the old woman had said she might ‘look at the books’. Susan had assumed this was exactly what she might do – look. She didn’t touch them, except now and then to put her finger on their spines. The titles besides were unencouraging, even unintelligible, like gibberish, and some were in other languages her mother said were French or German, or Latin.
On the long table was a dish. It was of yellowish pale glass, the colour the sherry had been, and it was kept empty.
Susan looked into the dish.
She would have to go back in a moment or be accused of something, having a bowel movement, trespassing, something.
The sun went in beyond the window and sudden rain began to hiss over the thick wild trees which closed the view.
“Susan.”
Her mother’s voice.
Susan ran from the room, along the corridor, back downstairs, into the passage. Her mother was standing, smoking, in the doorway of the sunken room, and behind her the grandmother stood, not leaning on anything at all, not on a stick, not even the arm of a chair.
“Where have you been?”
“To look at the books.”
As if rationally, the grandmother said, “Why don’t you stay to lunch, Anne? There’s plenty for three.”
“No, thank you, Mother. I have to go out this afternoon. I told you. Besides, I left our lunch ready. I can’t afford to waste it.”
“Let the child stay, then,” said the grandmother, hard as granite, demanding a hostage.
“Susan has homework to do.”
This was a lie. The one they usually told, when this thing came up about lunch, as so often it did.
“And what,” said the grandmother, “will Susan have for lunch in your flat? A sandwich, I suppose.”
The mother did not answer. The grandmother stared now, right at the child, “You tell me, then, what is this so-splendid lunch you can’t possibly miss?”
Susan looked at her mother, but Anne had turned away.
Hopelessly Susan said, “We’re having omelette and chips, Grandmother.”
“Ah.”
“And tomatoes,” apologised Susan.
“Indeed.” The grandmother walked across the room. She moved very slowly, stiffly, but without apparent effort. Where was she going? The fireplace? She reached the fireplace, stretched her arm across the mantelpiece, and drew off a small ornament, an apple of rosy china. “Look, do you see? Chipped. That precious woman, who cares for me so well, wantonly chipped it. That’s what I think of when I hear the word chips. I think of accidents to china, Anne. And so that is
