A Little Death (20 page)

Sometimes they used to play tennis. Mr. James had had two nets put up on the sunken lawn at the top of the garden and of course the maids couldn’t bring the trays up the centre steps in the middle of the terraces where everyone could see, so they had to go the other way round, which was a slippery, muddy slope behind a load of trees with branches sticking out in all directions. You had to duck and dodge round them, and that wasn’t easy if it was almost dark and you had a tray full of drinks. I was always having girls come to me crying because they’d fallen over and messed up their uniforms or sprained their ankles.

I don’t think Miss Georgina played tennis herself and I can’t imagine Mr. Booth was much of a one for running about. She was the umpire, keeping the score. You always knew who was going to win, not because they were good players, but because she always favoured the best-looking people, especially if they were men, so if a handsome man was playing, he’d win even if he didn’t hit one ball straight. ‘Oh, darling, you can win today, you’re awfully good. You’re the winner. Bunny’s the winner, everyone!’ Or Boysie, or Binkie, or some other silly pet name they went in for. But everyone seemed to take it in good part and, besides, there must have been more drinking than tennis that took place, judging by the amount that had to be carted up there. Some of them played with a tennis bat in one hand and a glass in
the other, and there was always broken glass for the gardeners to pick up afterwards.

We all knew that Mr. James wouldn’t like it if he found out, but who was going to tell him? I knew Master Edmund didn’t like it either and I couldn’t think why he didn’t say something to Mr. James, but he must have had his reasons. You always know where the power lies in a house: we knew it was with Miss Georgina, not Mr. James, and a lot of the servants were petrified of her. The worst party that Miss Georgina and Mr. Booth had ended up with her standing on the long table at the end of the drawing room. She’d got a golf club and she was swinging at golf balls, trying to hit them into the fireplace at the other end of the room. I think she must have had quite a few drinks, because these balls weren’t going anywhere near the fireplace, they were flying off in all directions, crashing against the panelling, the furniture, even one of Mr. James’s Morlands, but it only hit the frame, thank Heaven, because it was one of his favourites. And then of course the others were all queuing up to do the same and hitting these hard balls and Miss Georgina was laughing and encouraging them. I’d seen from the hall that this was going on and I was worried about the damage… but what could I do? I couldn’t go in there and stop them. I was so upset I went round to the back of the house outside the french windows where you could see into the drawing room. There was a little paved part outside the windows and thick bushes on each side, and I came creeping round there so that no one could see me. It had been raining and there was a nip in the air, so they’d got the doors shut.

Well, I could see all this going on inside from where I was standing, when suddenly I realised there was a man there, sitting down on the step with his back to the
windows. He wasn’t doing anything, just sitting there in the dark. Well, I thought: He must be the worse for drink, I’d better get him out of that wet before he catches his death, so I went over to speak to him and it was Mr. Booth. He said, ‘Hello, Miss Pepper, won’t you have some champagne?’ and then I saw he had a bottle and two glasses beside him.

I thought: Oh, well, that’s the last straw, trying to bring me into their caper. I wanted him to know I still had my pride in spite of everything, so I said, ‘Excuse me, Mr. Booth, there are things I must attend to.’

He said, ‘Won’t you stay for a moment, Miss Pepper?’

There was something about him, his voice—he had his cigar and his champagne all right, but he didn’t look his usual jolly self at all. Mr. Booth took a lot of drink, but I must say that I never saw him the worse for it, only that night, and even then he wasn’t what you’d call drunk, just a little bit unsteady when he got to his feet. I said to him, ‘You must excuse me,’ because of course I had no good reason to be there, but he said again ‘please stay’. We were standing side by side looking in through the window. I felt so sad, watching Miss Georgina spoiling those beautiful things with nothing I could do to stop any of it. I felt it as if they were my own; after all, I was the housekeeper—not that she gave me any respect, but just treated me as if I was nothing—but the worst of it was, how could she do that to Mr. James? I thought she really had gone mad and it upset me so much I just wanted to go upstairs and hide my head, but I had the girls to think of—I couldn’t leave them downstairs on their own with all that going on. I was standing there thinking this, and then I heard Mr. Booth say, ‘I am sorry about this.’

It gave me such a shock to hear that, I forgot myself and said, ‘What do you mean, sorry?’

He said, ‘I can’t stop her.’ It was on the tip of my tongue to say, ‘Well, why did you start her, then?’ because I thought, well, all these parties, it’s six of one and half a dozen of the other, when he said, ‘I can’t help her.’ It sounded as if he was talking to himself, not to me, so I didn’t say anything. I thought, she doesn’t need help, she needs someone to give her a good slap, but of course I didn’t say it.

Then Mr. Booth said, ‘I don’t know what to do.’

He was in his shirt-sleeves and I noticed he’d put his jacket over one of the bushes, so I said, ‘Well, let me take this inside for you and dry it out. The lining’ll be all damp.’

He looked at me as if he hadn’t heard me and said it again: ‘I don’t know what to do.’

It was hearing him say that decided me, to be honest. Because nobody knew what to do, not Mr. Booth, nor Master Edmund, nor anyone else, and Mr. James, he didn’t know what was happening. Well, I thought it was high time that Mr. James put his foot down. After all, he should be master in his own house, not some other man. Then Mr. Booth said, ‘Please, won’t you have a drink with me, Miss Pepper?’

Well, of course, I said, ‘No, thank you.’

But he wasn’t having any of it; he almost forced the glass into my hand. ‘Please, Miss Pepper, you’re the only decent person in the whole house.’ So I did, I had a glass of champagne with him. After all, why shouldn’t I? It may be the rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate, but we’re all the same before God, aren’t we? Mr. Booth said, ‘I’ll drink to you, Miss Pepper’ and raised his glass. And I stood there and thought: Yes, I’ll drink to me as well—here’s to you, Ada. I thought: Miss
Georgina may treat you like nothing, but you’re not nothing and you won’t be nothing, not anymore. So I raised my glass and gave it a little clink against Mr. Booth’s, and then I had a drink.

I suppose Miss Georgina thought the fairies would put everything back in its place overnight, all those marks on the wall where the golf balls had hit, but we had to have men in to repair some of them and that cost money. I couldn’t just magic it out of my housekeeping and I don’t know what she thought I was going to tell Mr. James. Not what I
did
tell him, that’s for certain. He came back a few days later and the next thing is, he wants to see me in the drawing room. So I went in and he was standing by the Morland picture, the one that was his favourite, just touching the frame with his fingers. He didn’t look angry, just very calm. I couldn’t tell what was in his mind at all. ‘Will you tell me what happened, Ada?’

I thought, in for a penny, in for a pound, and I said, ‘It was only a game, sir, but a dangerous one if you don’t mind my saying. Miss Georgina had a party, sir, while you were away.’

Mr. James said, ‘Not the first.’

‘No, sir, not the first.’

‘One of many?’

‘Yes, sir, one of many.’

‘Since her illness?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Once I’d started, it was as easy as saying the catechism. Then he asked me: ‘Was Mr. Booth the— occasion—of her illness?’

That was what he said. I remember every word of that conversation. Although I was saying sir this and sir that, I didn’t feel like a servant, I didn’t feel anything. It took me a moment to understand what he meant about
the occasion of her illness, then I answered: ‘I think so, sir.’

‘Thank you, Ada, you may go.’

‘Thank you, sir.’ Then I left the room. And I’ll tell you something: that party was the last time Mr. Booth ever set foot in Hope House and very glad we servants were to see the back of him, I can tell you.

Well, I say that, but it was queer about Mr. Booth. Because you might say he was a bad man, but I don’t think he was, not altogether. I watched his face when he was looking through the window at Miss Georgina and I thought: He does love her, or else he wouldn’t look so sad as he did. Mind you, I’m not saying it was right, what they did, because it wasn’t. It was very, very wrong. Mr. Booth did the right thing at the trial, of course, but then he would because he was a gentleman, not like all those others who came smashing up Mr. James’s lovely house. I can’t say I’d ever really taken to him, what with all that waving champagne bottles and dashing about the place, but when I saw him watching Miss Georgina that night, I just felt sorry for him. I remember he said, ‘It’s not me she wants.’ Just to himself, like that. I didn’t know what he was talking about, because it sounded like a lot of nonsense, Miss Georgina wanting things, when she had that beautiful house and more clothes than she knew what to do with, and a good husband like Mr. James. And as I say, I looked at Mr. Booth standing there in the darkness and I couldn’t make it out really, what I thought.

It was Ada who told Jimmy about Teddy. He was bound to find out sooner or later. I thought I would mind about it terribly, but when it happened I didn’t care very much. I suppose the funniest thing was that Teddy was not a romantic man and he certainly wasn’t a passionate lover. I suppose it isn’t necessary to be very passionate with tarts and Teddy had had lots of those. But one would really have to say that his chief characteristic was reluctance. And what was charming was the way he overcame it—well, how could he help himself? But I was very fond of Teddy and I certainly had more fun in bed with him than I ever had with Jimmy. I often sit here and think of Teddy. It makes me happy to think of him. Thinking about Jimmy just makes me feel blue. Although Teddy told me he was at our wedding, the first time I actually remember speaking to him was at a house party. It was several years after the Great War ended, but things weren’t completely back to normal, well, not unless you’d made money from the war, which Jimmy certainly had, and Teddy as well, of course. Anyway, I was finding the whole thing very dull and wondering how I could escape when Teddy came up to me and said, ‘If you sit there any longer, you’ll be covered in cobwebs. Come on, I’ll take you out for a drive.’ And he whisked me off to the stables and showed me the most wonderful silver car. I remember he said, ‘I’ve got
six cars, but this is my favourite.’ Good heavens, I thought, six! I was very impressed because Jimmy only had one in those days, and it was black and looked like a tin box. Teddy’s cars were always his pride and joy. He said, ‘Hang on to your hat,’ and absolutely raced me round the countryside. It never occurred to him that I might want to look at the scenery, all he cared about was showing me how fast his car could go. At one point we met a flock of sheep coming the other way, but he didn’t let up for one moment. The shepherd leaped into the hedge and the sheep shot off in all directions.

I thought it was the funniest thing I’d ever seen. I said, ‘This is much more fun than all that chat.’

‘Well, there’s a time for everything, but you looked in urgent need of a bit of excitement.’

I said, ‘Oh, I was,’ and I leaned over and gave him a kiss.

I’ll never forget what he said then: ‘Good lord, I don’t think that’s a very good idea, do you?’ But he was smiling when he said it. You see, Teddy was decent, he was—to use an old-fashioned word—honourable. He liked Jimmy and hated the idea of cuckolding him. People are so stupid, they always assume that it’s the man who makes the overtures. I knew that Teddy wanted me, but I also knew that he would never have done a thing about it. So what could I do? If you were to put it crudely, which is what most people seem to do these days, you would say that I offered myself to him on a plate.

It was one evening in the summer and Teddy had come to Hope House to see Jimmy about some business. It must have been very important, because normally Jimmy did all that sort of thing at the office. There were some other men there as well and Teddy wandered out of the meeting early, so I offered to show
him the garden. It wasn’t planned or anything, because I hadn’t known he would be there, it was just a lucky chance. There was a large wooded area at the top of our garden near the summerhouse and I thought the gardeners wouldn’t be there so late, so that was where I took him. I knew I had to be direct, you see, if I was going to seduce him. I hadn’t done anything quite like it before, but I’d hit on an idea which would be a novelty to him and I thought it would work. We were walking along, just exchanging the normal pleasantries—always so peaceful at this time of day and so on—when I thought, well, it’s now or never, so I said, ‘Oh look up there,’ and pointed, so that he would think it was some special sort of squirrel or bird or something, and while he was trying to see what was up there I ran off and hid behind a tree. I took off all my clothes except my shoes and stockings and when he came to look for me I stepped right out in front of him… unfortunately it wasn’t a terribly warm evening and I must have looked rather mauve.

He was so kind; the first thing he said was, ‘You’re quite lovely, but you’re going to catch pneumonia.’ And then he put his arms round me and gave me a kiss and said, ‘I can’t imagine why you should want me, I’m far too old and fat.’

‘Oh, but I do want you, very much.’ Teddy said, ‘Well, at least I can keep you warm.’ Poor Teddy. But Jimmy was always somewhere else, or when he was at home, he was taken up with a ridiculous obsession about model communities. He was forever talking about Robert Owen, which was rather mad because Jimmy wasn’t a socialist—how could he be with all that money? It’s just a lot of fancy names for interfering in people’s lives, in my opinion. I used to ask Jimmy, ‘How do you know that these people want to
live in your houses? They’re probably happier than we are where they are now.’ Jimmy could never answer that. Because that was the point of it, you see. Jimmy always had to have some vision, some idea he could try to turn into reality. I’d been a dismal failure, so he’d replaced me with a row of cottages with indoor lavatories. I never blamed Jimmy for that, but it was the most monumental bore. Poor Edmund had to take the brunt of it—he’s always had more patience than I have and I really felt I would explode if I had to listen to any more Utopian nonsense. Jimmy had the most enormous pile of plans and sketches of model cottages and factories and schools and everything, he’d done most of it himself and he was forever talking about how he was going to send it to George Bernard Shaw. I don’t know what became of that, because I don’t think he ever wrote to Mr. Shaw. But he had great plans for this village: they were all to wash the clothes together in one big laundry and make food together in one kitchen, and have all the children in one nursery, and hold educational classes for the men after their work was finished and all sorts of things. I said to him once, ‘Jimmy, supposing these people don’t like each other, what then? You’re making everything communal except sexual intercourse.’