Muriel Pulls It Off (5 page)

‘My dog.’ Muriel intended to tackle one hurdle at a time. She stood straight and made up her mind, in a flash, to take command. ‘As you know, I have a dog with me. I am going to take him for a run. Will somebody please carry his basket to my bedroom? For the time being he will sleep there with me. When I come in I will have to find something for him to eat. He isn’t fussy. Will you stand by? I’ll need to be shown to the kitchen. Later we can discuss plans for the evening.’

Monopoly, plaintive and resembling Flavia, was barking in the car. Dulcie stood nearby. ‘I was wondering when you were going to let Josephine out. You’ll have to keep her on a lead. Some of our cats are elderly.’

A stretch lead, a conjuror’s rope, lay in a car pocket. Muriel attached it to Monopoly’s collar as he pulled. ‘How many cats?’

‘Well. I have seven. There’s two belonging to the house. Phyllis has one and there’s the other that Sonia fostered. She lives here and Sonia feeds her weekdays. During weekends she muddles in with mine. Sonia
normally pops over in the evenings. That’s to say in summer. She brings a picnic for Tabby, who I call Corin, and they eat it together down by the stream. Won’t take Corin home with her since she lives on a busy road.’

Eleven cats.

‘There’s never been a dog here and we’ve sworn there never would be.’ She fermented against Muriel as one about to strike. ‘So long as you can keep Josephine on a lead until matters are resolved.’

The knacker’s yard?

Dulcie snorted and shuffled off; rounding a bend and disappearing. At a run, Monopoly took the entire length of the lead and made for a clump of shrubs that grew, dense and dark, beyond the gravel sweep.

It was a warm evening and the lawn that spread away from the clump was green and fresh; well cut and sprinkled. It contrasted with the hard, burnt surface that surrounded the nursing home at Shifford. Was Muriel, on her estate, breaking the water laws? Was she eligible for arrest? She felt dejected and guided Monopoly away from the house and down the drive under the ilex trees.

As they exercised, Monopoly wrestling for freedom, Muriel tried to stifle her rage. Marco had no right to thwart her. Phyllis, who appeared, in the absence of Jerome, to have become her housekeeper, had no right, whatever the grievance, to greet her with ire. She dreaded learning on her return that Mambles, Jubilee, Lizzie and Hugh were also on the rampage; eager for their slices.

A word with Peter would help.

A car approached head-on. It was too soon for Marco even if, inebriated, he had driven at a rattling pace. It slowed and Muriel was scrutinised by the smiling lady of the apron and patterned frock who had witnessed Jerome’s departure.

She spoke in a wonderful way. ‘I’m Kitty. I cook here. We live in the village and I do lunch and dinner. Well, I have done up to now. Phyllis is to see to the breakfast now you’re here - like she did for Mr Atkins. How many will you be? You tell me. Plenty to eat up there - especially at this time of year.’

With no qualms, Muriel told Kitty that her son and daughter-in-law were on their way and that there were to be three for dinner. ‘Is that all right?’

‘Of course it’s all right.’ She laughed. ‘That’s lovely for you. It’s your home now. You must do as you please. Do they know up there or should
I get Phyllis to help me with the double room? She’ll grumble but don’t take any notice.’

Kitty left Muriel standing at the end of Monopoly’s lead. Thanks be to heaven for Kitty.

Nearly six o’clock. Muriel and her husband’s hound walked into the house where Phyllis, disdain pressed into every pleat of her skirt, scowled before them.

‘You never told me there were to be two more. Kitty always has to be first with the news. She’s only cook here. I’m housekeeper, having previously been companion and nurse.’

‘I didn’t know until an hour ago. I was going to discuss arrangements, as I told you, when I came in from my walk. It happened that I met Kitty on the drive and she asked me, very properly, how many we were to be for dinner.’

In the dimness, Phyllis’s breath upon her and Phyllis’s gesticulations fanning the air, Muriel craved a biscuit. A Mars bar or a chocolate ice cream would be ideal. Her body hung lumpy and lifeless, in spite of the brief burst of exercise. Her eyes wheeled to a possible perching place.

A purple and blue armchair, smothered in stitch-work, stood at an angle to the stone fireplace, its skirt touching a long beaded stool.

‘Sorry Phyllis. I need to sit down.’ A mighty pain in her stomach warned Muriel that she must ask Phyllis to direct her to a lavatory. She had not noticed a single one since her first appearance at Bradstow. It was remarkable that she had not even been shown a bathroom when ushered to the four-poster bedroom of her dreams; remarkable, considering her bathing habits, that she had not asked for one. Time ran short. ‘Before discussing anything further,’ she began, ‘can you show me to a lavatory?’

Phyllis waved her arms about; enraging Muriel. They ought to be pinned, by law, against her back - those arms, she thought. As she followed the woman, Muriel wondered if she walked deliberately slowly. The matter was urgent but she didn’t admit it as she strode with tightened buttocks, the pain in her middle gathering momentum. They were in a passage again, the one that followed curves and wiggles to the telephone and off which lay cottagey rooms with latticed windows.

Muriel was in crisis.

‘Hurry. It’s urgent.’ Nothing to be ashamed of. The Queen, in all probability, had the squitters from time to time. Princess Matilda certainly
did, as Muriel knew to her cost, for on occasions she had had to cope with the aftermath. Not actually with buckets and cloths but with Mambles’s laments. They ran the last lap and Phyllis pushed past her to open a
china-handled
panelled door. A mahogany lavatory was revealed and Muriel hurled off the wooden lid which spun and clanked upon the flagged flooring. The whole contraption was a work of art; the china, the chain, the warmth of the wood.

Phyllis waited outside and Muriel heard her fidgeting as she ran the basin tap to muffle her sounds. Never, normally, did she suffer in this way. She flushed away the confusions of the last week, stood tall once again and inspected her face in the mirror; flicking at her hair with both hands. Her inside subsided and she stalked out into the passage; keen to show poise. Making no mention of discomfort, she suggested to Phyllis that they return to the hall to resume their administrative talk. ‘As you know, I am in ignorance of everything here. I am relying on all of you and on Mr Stiller, who will be here on Monday morning, to explain things to me and to the household. Meanwhile I have to take charge. That is the way it is.’

Was Dawson deep in prayer as he brewed his own beer and as Delilah planned her socialising calendar?

Phyllis replied, ‘Very well. What are the orders?’

‘I want a room prepared for my son and daughter-in-law who will,’ she glared at her watch, ‘be here in an hour or so. Dinner for three - no matter how simple - at about eight-fifteen, if that suits Kitty. Drinks before that. Where are the drinks normally set out?’

‘Never. Mr Atkins didn’t indulge and he’d sooner others didn’t when they came.’ She was not to be humbled or crushed.

‘Perhaps there are no drinks, then, in the house?’

‘There’s the cellar. That’s stacked. Has been since the start of time.’

Whew.

Muriel asked to be taken to the kitchen. A word with Kitty would cheer her up. The kitchen was unappealing; grey and white and smelling fridgey. The floor was covered in ice-cold linoleum and the surfaces with chipped Formica.

Aunt Alice, she supposed, had done it over when the war ended and servants came flooding back.

She resolved not to involve herself with the history of the house  or the habits of its previous owners or to fall into traps. She did not wish to
transform into a dyke in grateful memory of Aunt Alice. Anything was possible.

In the kitchen Kitty rolled a pin upon the table, extolling the delights of having someone to cook for once again. Mr Atkins had done no more than pick.

Muriel, with her stomach in a shaky state, did not attend to the details of the meal that Kitty was about to cook. She explained to the women present that she hoped they would all be able to muddle through until Monday, and wished to heaven that Phyllis would disappear. When she did no such thing, Muriel gave her the slip and went to her bedroom. On the bed she lay, aching in the middle, wishing that Monopoly didn’t occupy a corner of the room and that Marco and Flavia were not on their way and hoping that they had not alerted Hugh. In the morning she must ring Mambles and Lizzie, if ever she could retrace her steps to the telephone.

She decided to tell them how foul it was; antiquated, de-alcoholised, haunted…..

Mind indistinct and mingled, she fell asleep, her head on a square pillow.

M
arco in merry mood, stood at the foot of the four-poster bed. ‘Wake up. Flave’s in the bath. What a bath. Animal feet and all. Everything’s in control. I found an old hermaphrodite who showed me to the cellar. Full of it. Amazing stuff. This place really is the answer. Flave’s speechless. I’ve arranged drinks with the help of the hermaphrodite. I think she’s quite enjoying herself - says nobody’s been down there for at least fifteen years.’

‘Marco!’

Muriel sprang up and slipped on skirt and shoes and more besides. Then and there she decided not to admonish her boy, for was he not just what she needed? It would have taken another fifteen years to summon the courage to order Dulcie.

Marco was beside himself; wild in appreciation of the wonders of Bradstow. Wondering, his mother surmised, when she planned to expire. To drop off her perch. Whatever else, he had taste, style or whatnot. And panache too; wit, charm and mastery. She must carry him along with her.

Jerome, at least, lay in ignorance of the upheavals that were taking place under his vacated Elizabethan eaves.

‘Hi Monopoly. How does this suit you? Not bad eh? Ma. I’m going for a bath after Flave. Downstairs in half an hour for treats from the cellar.’

Muriel, too, intended to take a bath. What about hot water? Her passion. Was it in superabundance?

They met in the drawing room. Flavia cooed, ‘Hi Chick. What a place.’

Marco stood, a lively conductor, behind a tray of drinks and glasses, picking up bottle after bottle and reading from foxed labels. Holding one up, he whistled, ‘Look at this. Château Laville Haut-Brion. Phew!’

He rolled his eyes and danced upon his feet. ‘I’m saving the champagne until tomorrow. Veuve Clicquot. Ancient, flat and brown. Any Yanks in the neighbourhood? We could make a real scene with it. Dulcie has stacked some in the fridge. Time you got a new one by the way.’

Flavia battled with a French window as Muriel accepted a glass of red Bordeaux from her son who went for whisky; contents of a bottle he had brought with him from London. Just in case.

Glass in hand he followed Flavia through the French window, calling back that they planned to explore. Muriel was alone with her distinctly sweet and fruity wine, hoping that, in its antiquity, it would not disturb her stomach further. At least she knew where to find a lavatory.

As she sat the door flew open and Dulcie, an abomination, advanced holding a Stanley knife; a short, blunt, squat object that she shoved into Muriel’s hand. With that she sat beside her on the sofa and wheezed, ‘I’ve got a blood blister in my mouth. Pierce it,’ and opened her mouth inordinately wide.

‘I can’t.’

‘Stupid woman. Go on. Pierce it.’

‘I might cut an artery.’ She looked into the darkness of Dulcie’s mouth and saw a huge red lump, larger than a ping-pong ball, encased in papery skin. It took up all available space and Dulcie’s voice dwindled as she ordered, for the third time, ‘Pierce it.’

Having set her glass down on a table, Muriel stabbed at the balloon. Blood spattered out upon her, covering hands and arms, shirt, skirt and shoes. It also flew in blobs onto the sofa in its priceless casing as Muriel seized upon a crewelwork cushion and clamped it over the source of the flood, obscuring Dulcie’s face and knocking askew her bifocals.

Manslaughter? Hangdog, she presented herself in the dock. ‘Do you mean to say, Mrs Cottle, that you, totally inexperienced in medical matters, plunged this knife into the mouth of one of your domestic staff?’

Inexperienced? She had taken a first-aid course.

But Dulcie was alive, holding the crewelwork cushion to her mouth and blundering out of the room. Muriel held the damp knife and looked down upon the dripping redness of her clothing. Up she went to change. God knew what the gyrating Phyllis was to suspect. First diarrhoea. Now haemorrhage.

As she peeled off her clothing she noticed that somebody had unpacked her things, and that Monopoly, curled up in his basket, cared not
a whit for her bloody appearance. Were dogs the answer? Was it not an asset to share a room with one so infinitely more helpless, and idiotic even, than oneself?

Monopoly’s head drooped over the wicker lip of his basket.

The door opened and in came Dulcie. ‘Have you still got that knife I lent you?’

Until a moment earlier Muriel had been clasping it. Only as she changed her clothes had she put it down on the table by her bed. She picked it up and showed it off; proving reliability.

‘Pierce it. It’s come up again.’ Her voice was steady, if muffled, and told that the need was immediate. She sat on a curving, carved stool and commanded, ‘Go on. Pierce it.’

This time Muriel acted fast. The habit of piercing blood blisters in mouths had formed and caused her no further bother. In went the knife and out poured blood, re-sousing Muriel’s clothes and a hand-stitched rug with a pattern of roses on a grey-pink background.

After the second piercing, Dulcie snatched a hand towel from a wooden horse standing in the corner of the bedroom alongside a painted wardrobe. She clapped it to her face and tripped, almost youthfully, from the room without making any signal to her new employer, if that, indeed, was Muriel’s role in her life.

Was Dulcie a member of staff?

One of Muriel’s myrmidons?

For the second time the lady of the manor dressed for dinner and fussed about the rug. She fussed, too, about her stained garments. No washing basket in evidence.

Leaving the bloody bundle behind a free-standing looking glass, she warned Monopoly not to nose, then found her way back to the drawing room.

Marco and Flavia had cut short their exploratory trip from the need to refill their glasses, and Muriel told them of her piercing sessions. Flavia squealed, ‘What an absolute scream.’

Up to a point, thought Muriel, pleased to entertain.

The dining room, in Muriel’s eye, took the cake for sparkling wonder.

Paintings of the early seventeenth century trapped in coarse wooden frames covered walls already half-hidden by discoloured Voiseyesque paper.

Candles, branching from neglected silver, filtered light across the table as Marco suggested, ‘We can get one of your nutters to shine these up for your first major gala.’ His mother hid a heave. Galas. Shimmering silver, fine wines with faded dates upon the bottles. As ever, Marco was running before he could walk and, as ever, with the use of Muriel’s legs.

Flavia said, ‘They’d give their eyes to photograph this for
Interiors
.’

Marco, behind her, ‘Why not Ma? Rather fun. We could spill the beans to father that way. Airmail him a copy. Muriel Cottle, owner of Bradstow Manor. Bet it’s Grade 1 and all that.’

Muriel wanted to enjoy herself, but in her queasy stomach, a knot formed.

She wanted no help: no advice, no stamping, no pressures upon her. She wanted the waves of pleasure to spread over her one by one. She wished to be the sole owner of her stately home, to exercise the authority it demanded. She wanted to boss her son and his wife about; to tell them that breakfast was to be served at nine o’clock the following morning and that they were expected to partake, fully dressed, at that hour. She had no power to do this. She knew nothing of breakfast.

An uncompromising hatch, possibly another of Aunt Alice’s innovations, connected the dining room with the kitchen. Kitty maintained jolly contact through the opening - despatching full and excellent dishes and scooping away empty ones as soon as fielded by Marco who, unsteadily, proclaimed, ‘We’ll have to block in that awful thingumajig and slap some of your slaves into uniform. I’d like to see that Dulcie creature in livery.’

Flavia shone and giggled as Muriel’s energy dribbled away.

‘Kitty is the answer though. Nothing the matter with this  fodder or, that’s to say, nothing that a bit of whipping into shape won’t remedy.’

Muriel knew that her boy was drunk and that Flavia had entered a private heaven in anticipation of inheritance. She, who had not long before called her ‘Chick’ and offered her the use of an eyebrow pencil, thought to a future in which Muriel’s remains lay gnarled in a buried box.

Kitty’s head appeared mid-hatch. ‘Coffee in the dining room or next door, Mrs Cottle?’ It was deliberate, Muriel knew, that Kitty addressed her and not her son.

Marco replied, ‘Drawing room, Kitty, and what about liqueurs? I found a bottle of something celestial in the cellar. Vintage port - but are there any proper glasses?’

‘I’m sorry. I wouldn’t know.’

Muriel took to her feet and, staring sternly at Marco, said, ‘Enough for tonight. I’ll leave you two to drink your coffee and whatever else. Please, though, don’t make any more discoveries or issue any orders.’ Her voice was sharp and came as though from another corner of the room, from the clock or from the chandelier. ‘Tomorrow,’ she continued, ‘I will try to get to the bottom of things. You two are jumping the gun. I may not even be able to keep this place. For all I know it belongs to The National Trust, Heritage or something.’ She belted out each word at concert pitch. Marco, in his cups, whitened. ‘OK Ma. We’ll go quietly.’

As she prepared for the night she knew that, whatever else, the morning was hers to play with. The young ones were certain to sit late over port, with or without the appropriate glasses, and were sure to sleep until midday at the earliest. She would be up betimes to keep ahead of them; to plot for their departure, to convince them that the hurdles ahead were insurmountable. As she fell into sleep she believed she heard distant voices and the ping of a telephone bell and suspected Marco of ringing Hugh. Or friends perhaps; fellow idlers invited to celebrate.

Dulcie must turn on them wielding a Stanley knife. She would plant Sonia on the carpet before Marco and order her to beseech him to spare her mistress. Phyllis would put them in their places.

It was seven o’clock and another stupefying day promised through mist. ‘Come along Josephine. She bent to rouse Monopoly who slept in his basket and who had, up to the present, behaved in exemplary fashion given the unexpectedness of events.

Wearing the Queen’s dressing gown, Monopoly’s flexible lead in her pocket, Muriel encouraged the dog to follow her onto the murky landing. Down the stairs they trod, enemies at heart but accomplices now since Monopoly had conducted himself far more conveniently than had her son. He had not disgraced her nor, in these new surroundings, had he hunted for Hugh.

Hugh. That ping she had heard in the night.

In the hall Muriel was nonplussed. It was dark and shuttered and she had no knowledge as to where she might find a light switch. The dog was beside her and, to her amazement, she heard herself addressing him tenderly. ‘Oh Monopoly. What shall we do? I know you want to go out.’

It was not completely dark and the form of a window appeared before her eyes. She pulled aside a curtain and prised open a shutter, and then, in a state of euphoria, went on to draw back more curtains and unlatch more shutters in all of the windows.

But how were they going to get out? The solid door was locked and no key showed itself. Nothing stirred in the house and Muriel, pained to accept herself imprisoned with Marco, Flavia and God knew who else besides, bent to touch Monopoly; plucking at the flesh on his neck before pinching it into a hard, furry, tube-like band which she fondled between her fingers. She suggested to him that they search for a back door.

It was nearly seven-thirty when they found Phyllis waiting for them on the chill of the linoleum. Her eyes were hard and Muriel was close to fainting as she read the woman’s mind. ‘Phyllis. I must go out. Monopoly needs a run.’

Phyllis’s face was taut and merciless, her expression pained. ‘I daresay he does. It’s normally me, by the way, who opens the shutters.’ She led them to a door beyond the kitchen which ran out onto a flight of stairs that descended to a utility room. A clothes rack supporting damp towels and the odd thick sock, property of Jerome Atkins, was wound high to touch the ceiling and a barrow piled with logs stood alongside an antiquated refrigerator.

Muriel and her dog paused before pushing open yet another door that led into a barn-like space, cobwebbed and dark, sheltering a wondrous supply of fire wood; kindling, branches, trunks and twigs. House martins nested on beams and dropped their waste any old where.

Phyllis had left them to fend for themselves knowing full well that the room was unlit and the outer door hard to reach.

Muriel pulled Monopoly to her and clipped on his lead. It would not do to risk a solecism in the cat kingdom and complicate a day that already promised badly. She was not to know that Dulcie and her cats were slugabeds, and at that early hour Monopoly’s whims would pass unnoticed.

As the sun rose and the mist cleared, Muriel, slippers dampening in the dew, led the dog past the maimed walnut tree. From there she walked northwards in line with a high hedge that preluded a dip beyond, approachable by a flight of stone steps. Down these steps her slippers flapped, Monopoly tugging as he nosed not far ahead. She found herself
in an enclosure of flower beds. It had not occurred to her that she might, at the age of fifty-four, inherit a flower garden.

Red, pink and white roses, some as chunky as cabbages, grew amongst phlox, tall hollyhocks, tobacco plants and snapdragons. Climbers in silvery suits tussled in apple trees, intertwining themselves with small fruits showing bright in yellow, green and red.

Muriel returned to the steps and sat down, deciding to explore no further for the present but to ponder, among the roses, and try to decide how the hell to conduct herself in her new milieu. Monopoly lolloped to the end of his allowance of lead. Perhaps, she mused, to skin a cat. Can’t be helped. Then, with a ghastly jerk of her brain, she recognised that Mambles was on her mind. They had agreed to a meeting but Muriel had forgotten when or where it was supposed to take place. She was eligible for a rocket and knew that wisdom lay in telephoning Kensington Palace. Not that she wanted to. Far from it.

She must curb Marco and Flavia. Nose in a rose, she moaned, ‘How do I play it with Hugh? Do I or do I not wish for his return? Again she remembered the late-night ping. What was more, she knew that she must visit Jerome. It would not look good were she to neglect him now that her son had dipped into his cellar. She asked herself, as she shook her head, why it had to be populated with people. Surely they would disperse, these people on her mind, in the midst of beauty but no sooner did she rid herself of one than another forced its way in to gain supremacy.