Patricia Wentworth: The Girl in the Cellar

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?’

When she tried to remember the rest of the evening she couldn’t. It was just a wash of pale-tinted platitudes. She was aware of Lilian, who talked incessantly and never said anything that you could remember, and of Harriet, who sat in the sofa corner with her eyes on what looked like a parish magazine. Every now and then she said something of what she was reading-‘Mr Wimbush says-’ or, ‘Miss Brown writes-’

Thomasina came in to take the tray. Going out with it, she turned and surveyed the scene.

‘If you were to ask me, I’d say early to bed-that’s what I’d say.’

The words came into the fog in which Anne was. They seemed to start in her brain, in her heart, and to flow out from there until the room was full of them. For the last half-hour Lilian Fancourt’s words had come and gone in the fog, come and gone again. She lifted her eyes and looked across to where Thomasina stood by the door. She couldn’t see her distinctly because of the mist in the room. She didn’t know that her eyes looked through the fog with a desperate appeal.

Thomasina went out of the room, and she had a moment of absolute desolation. And then in what felt like the same moment she was back again. The door hadn’t shut. It couldn’t have shut, because it didn’t open again. Thomasina was there one moment, and the next she was coming back. She came back into the room and across it.

‘You’re coming to bed, Mrs Jim!’ she said. ‘If ever I see anyone ready for bed, it’s you, my poor dear, so you’ll just come along!’

Anne got up on her feet with a steadying arm to hold her.

She said good-night to Lilian, and good-night to Harriet, and she got out of the room. She didn’t know what they said in reply.

Lilian had a good deal to say. The words drifted lightly by and were gone. Harriet detached herself momentarily from the parish magazine. She said in a surprised voice, ‘Oh, are you going? Good-night.’ And then Thomasina had her through the door and it was shut.

She was in that state where the ordinary restraints are gone. She did not know that she was going to speak, but she heard herself saying. ‘I don’t belong anywhere-I just don’t belong.’ And then there was a kind of blank. They were going up the stairs. It was very difficult. She did her best, but it was very difficult. She was aware of Thomasina’s arm at her waist and of the baluster rail under her hand. The stairs took a long time to climb-a long, long time. There were times when she didn’t know what she was doing-times when Thomasina’s encouraging voice went away to the merest whisper, so faint that she could not really hear it. There were times when she didn’t know anything at all. And yet all these times passed. There came the moment when she felt the pillow under her head, and the moment when the light went out and left her free to a world of sleep.

Time passed-a lot of time. She roused up once and stirred in bed, to feel an exquisite relief and sink again into that deep, deep sleep.

When at last she awoke it was light outside. She lay for a few moments seeing the strange room but not fully conscious of it. There was sunshine outside the window and a twittering of birds-sunshine and bird song. She drew in a long breath and began to remember.