At seven in the morning I wrote that my daughter kept accounts.
I had hardly slept. Every time I turned, the narrow bed beside mine seemed to reproach me on Nell’s behalf, although Nell herself lay peacefully on her back with a hand beneath her cheek. I got up without waking her, dressed in yesterday’s skirt and took the lamp downstairs.
It had not been an answer to what she asked me. It was only a line on a form, which I had left for her to complete. Still, when I saw the space I had been prepared to give to all the work she did, I could not bring myself to put helper.
I wrote nothing else about her. She could correct me after breakfast. There was an old blot on the table, made in Thomas’s time; I rested the inkstand over it and remembered his hand on my wrist the first time I helped him balance a household account. Not like that, he’d said, pleasantly, though the sum was right. You don’t have to be quite so determined about it.
All these years I had thought the little incident ridiculous. That morning I remembered how long it took me to try again.
Bessie came out of the back sitting room with her hair loose over her shoulders. She saw the paper and pulled the door nearer to her body.
“I’m sorry. I thought no one was up.”
“Only me.”
“Would you like the fire made?”
“Thank you.”
She went back for her things, emerged with her hair pinned up, and knelt at the grate. In a few minutes the kindling had taken. She did it with a deliberation I had lost, putting the small pieces where they would work instead of willing the larger ones to be ready. I watched her until she asked if I needed the shovel.
“No. I was thinking how well you do it.”
“I’ve had practice.”
She put a final piece of coal at the back of the grate and stood, brushing a fleck of ash off her skirt.
We had breakfast ready before the others came down. Ruth appeared first, carrying the envelope I had returned to her. She asked if there were a pillar box nearby. I told her where and offered a stamp, which she refused because she had one in her purse. At the door she stopped.
“I won’t say the address in the letter. Only that I went to a meeting with friends.”
“You may say the address.”
“I know. But she’ll want to come and thank you, and she doesn’t like London.”
Her face was lighter now that she had decided. She went out, and I saw her pause on the top step to button her coat before setting off.
Nell read the line I had written while she was pouring the tea. She put down the pot, picked up the pen and added a small particular of her own. Then she passed me my cup.
“I can do it without being paid,” she said. “That doesn’t make it less work.”
“No.”
She looked at me. I left the answer where it was. No defence, no explanation of what I had meant in all those years when I had said help. She sat down beside me and cut the toast.
The visitors were anxious to depart without seeming anxious. Mrs Price had a shop to return to, Grace a lesson at eleven, Dora an employer who would not accept the census as an excuse for being late. Ada began to explain that a protest could hardly be conducted on the timetable of a business. Dora took her coat from the peg.
“It has to be conducted on mine.”
She kissed Mrs Wetherby’s cheek and left, calling goodbye to Bessie. By nine there were only Ada, Mrs Wetherby and the regular lodgers in the dining room. Bessie was washing up; I had paid her shilling before she started so she could leave when we had agreed, instead of waiting about while I found my purse.
We heard the doorbell. Ada put her teacup down so hard that some of it reached the saucer.
“I’ll answer,” she said.
“It’s my house.”
“Eleanor.”
“I mean I shall speak for myself.”
She remained in her chair. Mrs Wetherby took another piece of toast as if to demonstrate the calm Ada ought to have exhibited. It was a little unkind. I was grateful for it all the same.
The man on my step was thinner than I remembered from the day he delivered the schedule, with an old shaving cut near his jaw. His name was Cooper. He carried a case with a worn patch on the side, and he looked past me at the hall with the wary expression of a man who had already been asked to take a view on matters for which he would not be paid.
“Good morning, Mrs Bellamy. I have come for your schedule.”
“I have it here. There are some particulars I have not supplied.”
“Then perhaps I can help you.”
It was an entirely reasonable thing to say. I had expected to object to his manner and was left with the more troublesome difficulty of objecting to his purpose.
I took him into the sitting room. At the table he looked first at the details I had given, then at the statement Ada and Mrs Wetherby had written on a separate sheet. Five visitors had withheld their names and other particulars. I had written that there were five women in addition to those listed, and that they were refusing. I had not pretended the house empty, nor claimed they had become legally invisible by sleeping in it.
He read the statement twice. From the hall Ada’s skirts made a small sound. She was standing just outside the door.
“You understand that they should be entered here.” He put a finger beside the empty lines.
“Yes.”
“Then will you give me their names?”
I looked at the ordinary, competent hand holding the paper. Behind him the fire Bessie had made was beginning to throw out real heat.
“They have asked me not to.”
“The obligation is not removed by that request.”
“I understand.”
He looked up at me. I had been frightened that he would shout. His patience was harder to withstand.
“Are they here now?”
“Two of them.”
Ada came into the room then. She had put on her hat, though she had nowhere to go. Mrs Wetherby followed, less ceremoniously, carrying her walking stick.
“We are exercising our right to protest,” Ada said.
“You may protest, madam. I have to take the census.”
Mrs Wetherby introduced herself. Ada turned towards her so sharply that I thought she might knock the hat against the doorframe.
“They can ask in the post office who I am,” Mrs Wetherby said. “I should rather they had it from me. I will not supply the rest.”
Mr Cooper took out a pencil. The sound it made on the paper was unexpectedly loud. I saw Ada hearing it too: the record being made despite the plans she had spent weeks constructing.
“And you, madam?” he asked her.
“I decline.”
He made another note. “You stayed here last night?”
“I am declining to answer your questions.”
“Very well.”
It did not mean he agreed. He turned back to me, checked the people I had entered and asked about Mr Leach, whose name he had seen when he delivered the form. I said he was travelling and had not been here on the night in question. He checked the number of rooms and some of the handwriting, asked Nell about the addition she had made, and waited while she answered for herself.
At last he gathered the papers.
“There may be further enquiries.”
“Will they come to me?” I asked.
“They may.”
He gave me no prediction, and I could draw no comfort from his face. At the door he thanked me for the chair. I thanked him for explaining, which Ada would think a surrender but which seemed to me the least one owed a man for not being the person one had been ready to despise.
When he had gone my sister stood beside the sitting-room table, looking at the place where the paper had been.
“He’ll have written our names in, where he could.”
“Yes.”
“Then what’s the use?”
I had never heard her ask that of her own efforts. She was not directing it at me; she was looking at Mrs Wetherby, who took off her spectacles and folded them carefully.
“I don’t suppose we shall know today.”
Ada made an impatient gesture. “That’s a very comfortable answer.”
“It isn’t comfortable at all. But if we wanted to be certain of the result we ought to have stayed at home and done nothing.”
The bell rang again before Ada could reply. Ruth had forgotten the gloves she left by the folding bed. I fetched them, and she took a moment to tell Mrs Wetherby she had liked the music. Then she was gone into the Monday street, which had no interest in waiting while our consciences caught up with it.
By noon the guests had left. Ada asked me to send any letter concerning the census straight to her. She would see I was not left alone with it.
“But Tuesday first,” I said.
She looked at Bessie, who stood with her cloth parcel in one hand. “Yes. Tuesday.”
They went together as far as the corner. From the window I watched Ada trying to carry one of her own bags and Bessie taking it only after she had asked. It was hardly a revolution. It was also something I had not seen on Saturday.
Nell and I put the rooms back. The sheets smelt of other people’s soap. Grace had left a pencil drawing of Ruth beside the bed with a note that she was to have it when they met next. On the sitting-room mantelpiece Mrs Wetherby had set a half-crown beneath the clock. For the piano, said the folded paper. I left it there until Nell found it, so I would have someone to tell.
We sat down with the last of the apple pie at two. I had put the cream in a jug, although there was scarcely enough to require one. Nell scraped a little onto her plate and gave me the jug.
“I’m tired,” she said.
“So am I.”
We ate without talking. After a while she began humming the tune Grace had sung. I joined in, badly, and she laughed with her mouth full. A crumb caught in the lace of her cuff; she picked it out, still humming.
That was when Mr Harcourt came down.
He had a clean envelope in his hand. I knew before he spoke what it was, and felt a resentment so quick it surprised me. He had praised the pie the night before. He had enjoyed Mrs Wetherby’s company. I had thought those small agreements might commit him to something larger.
“I’m giving notice, Mrs Bellamy.”
Nell put down her spoon.
“On account of the noise?” I asked.
“On account of the uncertainty. I need to know what kind of house I am coming back to.”
“You are coming back to the same room.”
“That is not precisely what I mean.”
He put the envelope on the table. I made myself leave it where it lay.
“You may not agree with the women,” I said. “They were considerate of you.”
“Mrs Wetherby was very agreeable. I do not choose my lodging solely on the agreeable qualities of one night’s company.”
That was sensible too. I was growing weary of sensible remarks which gave me nothing I could quarrel with without making myself ridiculous.
“Your week’s payment is due this evening,” I said.
“It is in the envelope. I shall leave on Saturday, before luncheon.”
“Very well.”
He looked as if he had expected more persuasion. I could have supplied it: the sunny front room, the convenient route to his school, all the arrangements we had made over three years to keep the tea from being too strong and the fire from smoking. I would do every one of those things for another week, and perhaps he would leave anyway. He was entitled to go. Knowing it did not prevent me from wanting him to feel a little ashamed.
He went upstairs. Nell picked up the envelope, counted what was inside and laid it beside my plate.
“We have time to find somebody.”
“Everyone will hear.”
“Some will. Some won’t mind.”
I stared at the cream jug. We had had a good weekend. I would not let Mr Harcourt have the whole of it simply because he had brought me its bill.
“Dora said she might know someone who wanted the sitting room,” I said.
“To lodge?”
“For an evening. To read. Or talk. There wasn’t much of a plan.”
Nell pushed the empty dish away. She was still tired; she had the little crease between her eyebrows which appeared when a sum would not settle. Yet she reached for her pencil.
“Then tell me what she said. We can see what a plan would cost.”
I got up and brought the scrap of paper on which Dora had written her office address. I had put it beside Ruth’s letter and forgotten it. Now I placed it between Nell and me, where the two of us could read it.