The Girl in the Cellar

CHAPTER 4

Of course, I don’t know how much you know.’

If Miss Fancourt had said that once, she had said it so many times that one’s mind stopped being able to take it in, and then each time she had leaned across to press her hand and to say, ‘Oh, but we mustn’t. We mustn’t dwell on all that, must we?’

The first two or three times it happened Anne found herself saying ‘No.’ And then it came home to her, that it wasn’t a thing to be answered-it was just her way of talking, so she didn’t say anything at all.

The woman who had let her in, and whose name was quite unbelievably Thomasina Twisledon, took her upstairs and along a wide passage to her room. She thought it would look out on the back, and was vaguely pleased, she didn’t know why. There was a bathroom next door, and Thomasina said the water was always hot.

Anne found herself taking off her hat and her coat and looking into the glass to see whether her hair was tidy. She didn’t know what she expected to see when she looked in the glass. Everything was so strange. Would what she saw be strange too-another Anne whom she had never seen before, looking at her from a dream life which had no connection with reality?

She looked into the mirror and saw herself-her own real self. The relief was so great that the face she looked at, with its brown curling hair, its dark blue eyes, its parted lips, swam in a sudden mist. She leaned on her hands and let the giddiness go by.

Thomasina stood on the other side of the bed and watched her. In her own mind she was saying things like ‘Oh, my poor dear, you don’t know what you’ve come to! And there’s nothing I can do-there’s nothing anyone can do!’

The moment passed. Anne straightened up and turned. She went into the bathroom and washed, and then she went downstairs with Thomasina and into the little sitting-room on the left-hand side of the hall.

Lilian Fancourt was sitting there knitting. She began almost before Anne was in the room.

‘Are you very tired? Oh, you must be, I’m sure! Thomasina will bring you something to eat, and then you must get to bed! Oh, yes, I must insist upon that! Now, Thomasina, what shall it be? We mustn’t let her think that we mean to starve her here. What do you think?’

‘I’ll see what cook’s got ready,’ said Thomasina, and was gone.

Lilian Fancourt put her knitting down on her knee.

‘You’d think she’d be more interested,’ she said in a light complaining tone. ‘She’s been with us thirty years. It just shows, doesn’t it?’ She picked up her knitting again. ‘Do you like this? It was meant to be a jumper for me, but of course I don’t know whether I shall wear it now.’

Thomasina went through to the kitchen. It was not the old kitchen of the house-that had been abandoned sixty or seventy years ago. She went through a door at the back of the hall and along a stone passage until she came to it. There was a little elderly woman there with light frizzy blonde hair done up in a bun. She wore a dark grey dress with a big cook’s apron covering it so that only the sleeves and a bit of the hem showed. She was sitting at the kitchen table with a pack of cards spread out before her. She said without looking up, ‘Well, has she come?’

Thomasina said heavily, ‘Ay, she’s come, Mattie. I’m to take along a tray.’

Mattie gave a little crow.

‘And what did I tell you, Thomasina! P’raps you’ll believe me another time! She’ll come here and she’ll eat and drink solitary-that’s what I said not later than yesterday! But you didn’t believe me, now did you?’

Thomasina said, ‘No, I didn’t believe you, nor I won’t never, and not a bit of good your going on about it, Mattie. She looks as if what she needs most is a week in bed, the poor child!’

Mattie Oliver threw her a quick darting glance and chuckled.

‘Oh, that’s the way of it, is it? Haven’t you never had enough of putting people on pedestals and seeing them come topplin’ down? Oh, all right, all right, I’m a’comin’, aren’t I?’

On the other side of the house Anne felt the time go by fitfully, crazily. Lilian Fancourt never stopped talking, and it was all about nothing at all. There was no end to it. Your mind shut off in the middle of how inconvenient it was to have only two maids where there used to be seven or eight, and you came back to a long plaintive wail about how times had changed since the war.

‘But what I say is, there’s no need to change because other people do. My father never changed, never in the least, down to the day of his death a couple of years ago. He was ninety-five, you know, and he used to go out shooting until that last winter. Jim always said, “Let him alone-let him do what he wants to.” In fact I don’t know who was going to stop him. Not poor little me!’ She looked up coyly as she spoke.

Jim-Anne’s mind closed against the name. Not now-not here-not until she was fed and rested.

But Lilian Fancourt went on talking about him. Jim said this, and Jim said that, and Jim said the other.

And then the door opened and Thomasina came in with the tray. It was a blessed relief, because Lilian stopped talking about Jim. She looked up suddenly and said, ‘Where is Harriet?’

Thomasina said, ‘She’s not in yet.’

Lilian made a little vexed sound.

‘Oh dear-Father wouldn’t have liked it at all-not at all!’

And on that Harriet came in.

She was so tall that she seemed to look down upon Anne. She was so tall that she seemed to look down on herself. She had a small head on the top of a tall, lanky body, and she wore the kind of dark clothes that look as if they are meant to be mourning. Her hat was pushed back on her head. A capacious but shabby bag swung from her left hand. She put out the right with a curious poking effect, looked past Anne, and said with an odd rush of words, ‘I’m so sorry. Not to be in when you came. Have you been here long?’