‘Lodger’s Hook’ and went into the best parlour, where Mrs Cotton left out a cold meal and a thermos.
The tiny room was unlived-in and felt it. Of symbolic status, it was rarely used and kept in aspic, while Clan Cotton huddled around the stove in the back kitchen and kept themselves to themselves. Mary knew that Mrs Cotton took enormous pride in the room’s overstuffed furniture and starched antimacassars. Taking care, as always, not to drop a crumb, she ate her sliver of Woolton Pie and half a sliced carrot and drank the tea in the Thermos. Having finished, she stacked her used crockery on the tray and left it on the table. As soon as Mrs Cotton heard Mary go upstairs, she would dart out and deal with it.
Station 53d personnel were allocated only basic rent. Mrs Cotton’s back bedroom contained a narrow bed, a chest and a chair. The single wall adornment was a grim picture of the martyrdom of a saint called Sebastian, about whom Mary knew little, but his death looked nasty. However taxing it must have been, Mrs Cotton kept the house spotless. ‘It was what Iwas put on earth for,’ she said when Mary complimented her. Hers was a life dominated by scruple and scrubbing, a life in which she fought against the odds to produce fresh laundry and provisions. Mary admired the stoicism.
Fatigue had beaten her and Mary sat down with a thump on the bed. Reaching under her skirt, she unhooked a suspender. The evenings were mornings and the mornings, like this one, were midnight. She had never been an early riser at the best of times. She had been a girl who rebelliously drowsed and dreamed until her mother told her off. How many lie-ins had she enjoyed in her life? She could count them on the fingers of one hand. Once – Mary fumbled for the second suspender as she recalled the sweet and funny memory – once she and her cousin, Mabel, saved up and took themselves off for a night (in separate rooms, of course) in the splendours of a hotel in West Wittering. They had hung the ‘Do Not Disturb’ signs outside their rooms. From time to time Mary thought wistfully of that deep, unbroken slumber and the long, luxurious return to consciousness.
Her stockings were not glamorous ones, but precious even if the darn rubbed on the right big toe. She rolled them down and her flesh shrank from exposure. Experimentally, she pinched a bit of inner thigh, the area which rarely saw light of day. Still soft and silky.
Oh, Mary.
No one had ever felt its softness and silkiness.
‘Your fate is in the stars, dear,’ her mother had had a habit of saying whenever the vexed subject of marriage came up. ‘It’s no use wishing otherwise.’
As time went by, Mary knew her chances of marriage and physical fulfilment grew fewer and, worse, with each passing year she felt elements in her spirit wither and deplete. She strove valiantly not to allow that atrophy.
‘You can tell the difference between a woman who’s beenloved … and one who hasn’t.’ Her mother again, her beady eyes invariably fixed on her daughter as she spoke.
Wriggle out of suspender belt. Remove her one good vest on which – unfortunately – Mrs Cotton had launched some kind of military offensive, shrinking it into a felted garment of torture. Unfasten brassière.
Pour water from the ewer into the enamel basin. Wash face. Wash all over. ‘Strive for cleanliness, inner and outer,’ the vicar at their local parish had preached. ‘It’s marvellous, my brethren.’
Was it?
She glanced at the clock, a cheap buy from Woolworth’s. Housed in red tin it was the brightest object in the room.
Hurry, Mary
. It wouldn’t be long before she had to get up again.
Throwing back the sparsely feathered eiderdown and ancient blankets, she slid into bed. The cold sheets always gave her a bit of a shock but, forcing herself to relax, she lay back and closed her eyes. She had to be rested for the next shift.
No mistakes. Ever.
She began to drift.
In another life, Mary would
The tiny room was unlived-in and felt it. Of symbolic status, it was rarely used and kept in aspic, while Clan Cotton huddled around the stove in the back kitchen and kept themselves to themselves. Mary knew that Mrs Cotton took enormous pride in the room’s overstuffed furniture and starched antimacassars. Taking care, as always, not to drop a crumb, she ate her sliver of Woolton Pie and half a sliced carrot and drank the tea in the Thermos. Having finished, she stacked her used crockery on the tray and left it on the table. As soon as Mrs Cotton heard Mary go upstairs, she would dart out and deal with it.
Station 53d personnel were allocated only basic rent. Mrs Cotton’s back bedroom contained a narrow bed, a chest and a chair. The single wall adornment was a grim picture of the martyrdom of a saint called Sebastian, about whom Mary knew little, but his death looked nasty. However taxing it must have been, Mrs Cotton kept the house spotless. ‘It was what Iwas put on earth for,’ she said when Mary complimented her. Hers was a life dominated by scruple and scrubbing, a life in which she fought against the odds to produce fresh laundry and provisions. Mary admired the stoicism.
Fatigue had beaten her and Mary sat down with a thump on the bed. Reaching under her skirt, she unhooked a suspender. The evenings were mornings and the mornings, like this one, were midnight. She had never been an early riser at the best of times. She had been a girl who rebelliously drowsed and dreamed until her mother told her off. How many lie-ins had she enjoyed in her life? She could count them on the fingers of one hand. Once – Mary fumbled for the second suspender as she recalled the sweet and funny memory – once she and her cousin, Mabel, saved up and took themselves off for a night (in separate rooms, of course) in the splendours of a hotel in West Wittering. They had hung the ‘Do Not Disturb’ signs outside their rooms. From time to time Mary thought wistfully of that deep, unbroken slumber and the long, luxurious return to consciousness.
Her stockings were not glamorous ones, but precious even if the darn rubbed on the right big toe. She rolled them down and her flesh shrank from exposure. Experimentally, she pinched a bit of inner thigh, the area which rarely saw light of day. Still soft and silky.
Oh, Mary.
No one had ever felt its softness and silkiness.
‘Your fate is in the stars, dear,’ her mother had had a habit of saying whenever the vexed subject of marriage came up. ‘It’s no use wishing otherwise.’
As time went by, Mary knew her chances of marriage and physical fulfilment grew fewer and, worse, with each passing year she felt elements in her spirit wither and deplete. She strove valiantly not to allow that atrophy.
‘You can tell the difference between a woman who’s beenloved … and one who hasn’t.’ Her mother again, her beady eyes invariably fixed on her daughter as she spoke.
Wriggle out of suspender belt. Remove her one good vest on which – unfortunately – Mrs Cotton had launched some kind of military offensive, shrinking it into a felted garment of torture. Unfasten brassière.
Pour water from the ewer into the enamel basin. Wash face. Wash all over. ‘Strive for cleanliness, inner and outer,’ the vicar at their local parish had preached. ‘It’s marvellous, my brethren.’
Was it?
She glanced at the clock, a cheap buy from Woolworth’s. Housed in red tin it was the brightest object in the room.
Hurry, Mary
. It wouldn’t be long before she had to get up again.
Throwing back the sparsely feathered eiderdown and ancient blankets, she slid into bed. The cold sheets always gave her a bit of a shock but, forcing herself to relax, she lay back and closed her eyes. She had to be rested for the next shift.
No mistakes. Ever.
She began to drift.
In another life, Mary would
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