—
Anna came back from the kitchen and cut the strings on the parcels of sheets. She flipped a few folds open and sniffed the creases.
“Oof!” she said, waving a hand in front of her nose. “I’d hang these out back if it weren’t for the snow. Maybe if I leave the quilts off and open the windows for a few hours…And I suppose it’s paraffin pie I’ll be making for dinner tonight.” She glanced sideways at me. “I can’t help but notice you’ve not gone with them for a week and a half.”
“Can you blame me?”
“Not a bit,” she replied. “They’re that sleekit you might turn around and find they’ve left you at the side of the road.”
After a few seconds, I said, “Anna, can you teach me to knit?”
She had started refolding the sheets. She stopped.
“Come again?”
“You once asked if I could knit. I can’t. But I want to. I want to knit socks for the soldiers.”
“It’s not as easy as that,” she said, looking at me strangely. “It’s difficult to turn a good heel. There are competitions over it.”
“What about squares? Surely I could learn to knit squares. Are those also for the soldiers?”
“Mrs. Hyde—” she said.
“Maddie. Please call me Maddie.”
“I’m very sorry, but I don’t have time to teach you how to knit.”
“Then can I help you with the housework?”
She shook her head vigorously. “Oh, I don’t think so. No, I don’t think that would be wise at all.”
“But why?” I pleaded. “When we first got here, you accused me of ‘lolling about by the fire,’ and it’s true. It’s what I do all day, every day, and it’s driving me mad, but I’m stuck here until my husband either finds the monster or gives up on it. Please—your load would be lightened, and I’d be so happy to have something to do.”
She frowned. “Your husband would never approve, and I don’t suppose Angus would either.”
“They’ll never know. I won’t say a word to anyone, and I’ll turn back into my usual idle self the second anyone else steps in the door.”
Her hands went still, and I knew she was considering it.
“Have you ever made a bed?” she finally asked.
“Yes,” I said. “Well, once.”
She did a double take, then returned to folding. “I suppose if I change the sheets, you’d only have to put the quilts back on. And Mhàthair did ask me to pick up a few things at the shops this afternoon…”
“I can do more than just put the quilts on. I can also put their things away.”
She gave a sharp laugh. “Well, that would be an immense improvement. I’ve fairly given up hope in that regard.”
“So have they,” I said solemnly.
Her eyes widened. “I beg your pardon?”
She stared at me, daring me to deny it. Instead, I nodded.
“Oh, no, they never did think,” she said indignantly. “They could not have expected…”
“Yes, they most certainly did.” I raised my eyebrows for effect. “And still do.”
Her eyes blazed. “Well, in that case, I’ll just get these on the beds and leave you to it. Because if you don’t do it, I cannot see how it’s ever going to happen, and if nobody ever does it, I’ll never be able to sweep the carpets again.”
She scooped the sheets off the bar and sailed away, her bosom hoisted like the prow of a Viking ship.
I don’t know if I was more astounded at having talked her into the idea, or at coming up with it in the first place.
—
While Anna changed the sheets, I flipped through the newspaper to see if there were any details about the bombs we’d heard drop. There weren’t, but of course the paper would have already gone to press by the time it happened. There was plenty of other news though, and as I read it, my optimism about having found something to do with my days crashed into bleak depression.
The juggernaut that was the Russian army was now only 165 miles from Berlin, and Marshal Stalin had announced that in one advance in Silesia alone they’d left behind sixty thousand dead Germans and taken another twenty-one thousand prisoner. It was a victory for our side, but I could not feel anything but a grim acknowledgment of progress.
So many dead. Only two weeks earlier, I had found the idea of three thousand men killed in a single afternoon nearly impossible to comprehend. The sheer vastness of sixty thousand deaths was even more numbing. It made it almost possible to forget that each and every one of the dead had been an individual, with hopes and dreams and loves now snuffed.
I did not see how this could go on. The world would run out of men.
—
When Anna came back downstairs, I was sitting with the newspaper open in my lap, staring at the wall.
“You’ve not had a change of heart, have you?” she said.
“Not at all,” I said, forcing a smile. I folded the newspaper and stood. “So besides straightening everything and putting the quilts back on the beds, what else should I do? Fill the pitchers?”
She frowned in temporary bafflement. “Oh, you mean the jugs? Don’t worry about that. I’ll finish up after I’ve been to the shops.”
“It’s okay, Anna,” I said. “Even I can’t mess up filling pitchers—or rather, jugs—and you can check my handiwork when you get back.”
She tsked. “Oh, I’m not worried. Well, all right. Maybe I’ll have a wee peek, but just for the first few days.” She dug a key out of her apron pocket and held it out to me. “Here’s the master.”
I took hold of it, but it was several seconds before she let go.
—
I started with Meg’s room, which was easy because she was tidy, and worked my way down the hall.
Hank’s room was about as I expected. His clothes were mostly out of his luggage and scattered across the floor, and the rest looked like they were trying to make a slithering escape. I piled everything temporarily on the bed and began dragging his trunks and suitcases into the closet.
One trunk appeared to be full of stockings and cigarettes, but when it refused to budge, I dug beneath the top layers and found dozens of bottles of liquor. They were buffered by straw and cardboard, but I was surprised they’d survived the trip. Hank’s cache of international currency was so heavy I had to get down on my hands and knees and brace a foot against the bed to shift it, but eventually I forced it into the closet.
I was out of breath. Although the window was wide open, my blouse was sticking to my back, and this was before I had even begun to address the remaining mess.
It felt oddly intimate to be touching things like his socks and pajamas, never mind his underpants, but I soon got into a rhythm. At least he’d thrown his dirty clothes into one pile, so I didn’t need to inspect anything too closely in that regard.
Just when I thought I’d put everything away, I caught sight of something under the bed. It was a stack of postcards, and when I picked them up was shocked to find I was looking at a naked woman. She was reclining on a chaise longue with her legs apart, wearing nothing but a long string of pearls and a tiara.
I glanced through the rest of them, fascinated. I had never seen a fully naked body except my own—Ellis had always gotten straight to business with as little displacement of clothes as possible, and always in the dark—and was surprised at how different they were. One lay on her back on a white horse, letting one leg dangle so the camera could focus on the dark area between her legs. Another was on all fours on a picnic blanket, smiling over her shoulder at the photographer. Her legs were parted just enough that her dangling breasts were visible between them, so large they almost looked weighted. Mine were tiny by comparison.
When I came to the final card and realized there was a naked man in it as well, pressed up behind the woman and cupping her breasts, I became suddenly self-conscious and eager to be rid of them. I pulled open the drawer of the bedside table and, as I did, saw a small package labeled DOUGH-BOY PROPHYLACTIC. I had always thought a prophylactic was a toothbrush, but when I saw the words “for the prevention of venereal disease,” I realized it was something quite other. I dropped the postcards inside and closed the drawer. I didn’t want to learn anything else about Hank, and was glad that I’d finished his room.
I braced myself for the next, afraid of what I might learn about Ellis.
Although I thought I was prepared for anything, I was wrong. When I opened Ellis’s door, I stopped in my tracks, utterly stupefied. It looked as though a bomb had gone off. Clothes of all kinds, including his underpants, were strewn everywhere—flung over the bedposts, the back of the chair, even over the fire irons. There were heaps in corners, under the bed, and in the middle of the floor. His shoes, toiletries, and other sundries were scattered everywhere, and the only thing that had found its way onto the dresser was a slipper.
I couldn’t imagine how he’d managed to create such a mess. Then, with a wave of nausea, I realized he’d done it on purpose.
I could see it clearly: every time he discovered that his belongings still hadn’t been put away, he’d upped the ante by reaching into the trunks and throwing armloads of anything that came to hand into the air, kicking it all as it fell. How else to explain the toothbrush sticking out of a shoe, or the comb and hair pomade beneath the window? It was brutish, childish, and destructive, and it frightened me.
I started in the far corner and worked my way out. I could think of no other way to approach the mess that wasn’t overwhelming.
When I opened his top dresser drawer, I found a photograph of Hank and him standing on the beach at Bar Harbor, their arms slung casually over each other’s shoulders and grinning into the sun. Beneath it was a photograph of Hank alone, standing shirtless on the deck of a sailboat with his hands on his hips. His chest glistened, his arms and shoulders were muscled, and he smiled mischievously at whoever was behind the camera. There was no picture of me, although I must have been around.
In the next drawer down, I found several monogrammed handkerchiefs folded into packets. I opened them and counted more than a hundred of my pills. Then I folded them back up and left them where they were. I didn’t want him to think that Anna or Meg had taken them.
I had been locking my door only at night but decided to start keeping it locked during the day as well. I wanted to see how long it took him to go through that many pills.
—
I wondered if anyone other than Anna had seen the condition of Hank’s and Ellis’s rooms. I hoped not. I could only imagine what she thought of them and, by association, me.
Both of them would come back and see that everything had been put away and think nothing of what the person who’d done it had seen or thought. Indeed, they wouldn’t think of the person at all, except perhaps to feel victorious.
Although I’d unpacked my own things after only a couple of days, I was ashamed of how much I’d always taken for granted. I wondered how Emily was faring, and wished I could let her know how grateful I was for everything she’d done for me over the years. I couldn’t imagine it was easy being Edith Stone Hyde’s maid at that particular moment in time.
When the rooms were all finished and I’d replaced the quilts, closed the windows, and put up the Blackout frames, I slipped a few pairs of silk stockings from my own supply into Meg’s top drawer.