Hilary Mantel - Vacant Possession

‘The spare room?’ Lizzie looked at her; it might have been astonishment, but her face was so far from the human norm that it was always difficult to be sure what her expressions meant.

‘Well, it’s not really the spare room. Alistair’s always had it, since we came.’

‘I call it the spare room.’

‘I daresay it was, before we moved here. Anyway, what I’m saying is – don’t bother with it. His father will make him clean it up, when the school holidays start.’

‘Some rooms have no talent for cleaning. Some rooms will never be clean.’ Her tone was perhaps unnecessarily doom-laden, but Sylvia supposed she was devoted to her art. It was a good sign really.

‘I was wondering, would you take on another lady?’

Lizzie was washing down the sink with bleach. She shook her head, without pausing in her work.

‘Only, our vicar’s wife is looking for somebody to do a few hours for her.’

‘Did you say you could recommend me?’ Lizzie turned her full flat face towards her employer; her rouged cheeks glowed, ripely pink, in a waste of chalk-white powder.

‘I mentioned your name. I didn’t commit you.’

‘Not interested, Mrs S.’

‘I did tell her, I didn’t know how many other people you did for.’ Biting her cucumber: ‘You’re a bit of an enigma, Lizzie.’

‘I can’t take anything else on.’ Lizzie screwed the cap back on the bleach bottle. ‘I work at night.’

She bent down to put the bleach away under the sink, presenting to Sylvia her large rear end. ‘Yes, well, I thought I’d ask. I’d better get off to my committee meeting. Can I give you a lift?’

Lizzie took off her large plastic apron and hung it behind the kitchen door. ‘Thank you kindly, Mrs S. You’re a good woman. An angel, I might add.’

With a baffled smile, Sylvia went off to get her purse. Weird was the word. As it happened, though, Lizzie Blank was the only person who had answered her ad in the Reporter. The purplish, pinpoint, foreign-looking hand had prepared her for – well, a foreigner; a person of strange diction and eccentric ways of cleaning lavatories. Lizzie did not seem exactly foreign; but perhaps her parents were, perhaps she came from a funny background. She seemed a good-hearted soul, Sylvia thought, and willing enough; even if she was rather lavish with the cleaning materials.

She went back into the kitchen. Lizzie Blank was now in her outdoor garb; a dirndl skirt of red and blue, and a leopard-skin jacket. ‘I’m surprised you don’t feel the heat,’ Sylvia said, counting out her money. ‘There you are, love.’ Lizzie’s false nails flashed, and the notes vanished into one of her pockets.

‘It’s my pride and joy, this jacket,’ she said. ‘As my mother used to say, Pride must Abide.’

Lizzie took out a chiffon scarf, pink shot through with gold, and went out into the hall. In front of the mirror, she adjusted it carefully over her coiffure. ‘Ready?’ Sylvia said, swinging her car keys. ‘You’ll have to give me directions.’

Damn, she thought, I’ve been stuffing myself again; and I meant not to have any lunch.

They drove downhill towards the town centre. Right here, left here, said the charwoman, leading them into the maze of streets that still stood on the southern side of the motorway link. ‘All this will be coming down soon,’ Sylvia said. ‘You’ll all be dumped over Hadleigh way in a high-rise. How do you feel about that?’

‘All right.’

‘But it’ll break up your community.’

‘Not my community. I wasn’t born here.’

‘Oh, I see. But still, you won’t like life in a towerblock.’

‘I shan’t mind. You can throw things off the balconies.’

Sylvia gave her a sideways look, then switched her attention back to the road. She slowed down. Small brown children played by the kerb, barelegged in the July heat, crouching in the gutter and darting out into the road. There was not a blade of grass for miles. Midsummer brought out the worst in it, baking the cracks in the pavements, raising a stench from the dustbins. The long ginnels that ran between the houses discharged a dim effulgence of stale sweat and stale spices; a thin ginger cat slept on a coal-shed roof, its scarred limbs splayed, its eyes screwed tight against the glare. Not a tree, not a patch of shade. ‘Displacing people from their environment,’ Sylvia said. ‘You’d think the lesson would be learned by now.’

‘Here it is. Eugene Terrace.’

‘Whereabouts?’

‘This will do.’ Lizzie opened the car door and began to lever her bloated body out of the seat, swivelling sideways and kicking her feet over the kerb. Her ankle chain flashed in the sunlight. Out at last, she leaned down and stuck her face in at the passenger door. ‘Thanks a million, Mrs S.’ Inside the leopard-skin jacket she was perspiring heavily, and patches of grease were breaking through her face powder; she gave a terrifying impression of imminent dissolution, as if fire had broken out at Madame Tussaud’s.

Sylvia drew back from her grinning mouth and heavy scent. ‘Is this where you live, at this shop?’

‘Over the top. It’s temporary. I’m stopping with a friend, he’s got lodgings here.’

‘See you Thursday then.’ She watched Lizzie, waddling towards the side door of the fly-blown corner grocery. I wonder what she means about working at night? Can she possibly be a prostitute? Surely not; she was too grotesque for anyone’s taste. Lizzie stopped, ferreting in her bag for her door key. There was something unreal about her, as if she were a puppet, or an illustration loosed from the pages of a book. Suddenly, and with awful clarity, Sylvia understood her mingled repulsion and fascination, the prickling of kinship which had made her take the creature on. It was herself she was seeing, Sylvia Sidney of ten years back, the masklike maquillage, the jelly-flesh wobbling like a sow’s; the great big beautiful baby doll. She felt suddenly sick. She groped for the gear lever.

Lizzie Blank, known otherwise as Muriel Axon, turned her key in the lock; and entered the dismal passageway of Mukerjee’s All-Asia Emporium.

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