Free Man at the Helm by Nina Stibbe

strong, unusual – and felt wretched and stupid for letting her go without more of a fight. Our mother sympathized with us but said there was no easy solution. Helps like Mrs Lunt were thin on the ground in villages and, like the Brownies and Scouts, had waiting lists as long as your arm and you had to swoop wheneverone came free and try to engage them before anyone else got there. There was a story of an elderly lady on her deathbed having to endure people knocking on the door, swooping for the daily help.
    We knew of only one available woman in the parish. This woman had a card in the newsagent’s. This woman, Audrina, was good at cleaning apparently but was also a spirit medium – a fact advertised on the same card. We mentioned Audrina to our mother but she didn’t want a spirit medium hanging about at our house doing laundry. We didn’t know what a medium actually was – my sister thought a prostitute but I thought something to do with ghosts. I strongly suspected I was right – our mother wouldn’t have minded a prostitute hanging about doing laundry.
    Anyway, our mother said we should just try to pull together as a team and, if the worst came to the absolute worst, we’d have to go to the Three Sisters in Malby and buy some new T-shirts and pants. We should have told her then about the water-damaged rug and Indian boxes – to indicate the worst had already come. But we didn’t, thinking what’s the point of going on tranquillizers to cheer yourself up if your daughters keep delivering really sad news? So we let sleeping dogs lie.
    With all this in mind my sister wrote to Mrs Lunt.
     
Dear Mrs Lunt,
You are so right – petrol has shot up in price. Some say it will soon be ten bob a gallon in old money. But we are finding it difficult to keep up with all the laundry and housework here. It would be an enormous help if you would reconsider your decision to leave and actually start coming again. You don’t have to come every day, just two or three longer days would probably be enough and use less petrol than coming every day.
The thing is, Mrs Lunt, I am temperamentally unsuited for housework (and it turns out so are the girls) whereas you are 100 per cent suited. Plus it’s imperative to have it done, especially the laundry which has piled up like Mount Sorrel.
     
Please telephone Lizzie or myself if it’s ‘yes’, otherwise just forget I ever wrote.
     
I hope you are well.
     
Yours truly,
Elizabeth Vogel (Mrs)
     
    Mrs Lunt didn’t telephone and the house got more and more messy. Also, no nanny would come to live with us in the village either, even though they’d have had their own bathroom, a little telly, the use of a Mercedes and a minimum of two ponies to choose from. The nanny agency sent two candidates in taxis to view us but both hated the idea of having to drive the Mercedes such a long and windy way into town for a film or a new bra, and they didn’t even ask our mother what the salary was (and that said it all).
    After all those years cooped up with amber-eyed Moira and her predecessors, it was nice to be free to go where we wanted on our own and not have to do what the nanny wanted us to do, such as play endless games of Who Am I? and drink Nesquik. Though it did occur to us that a nanny might have usefully contributed to the laundry effort.
    We wandered freely around the village and peeped into car windows to see if any dogs had been left inside. We chucked hard apples into the pond, sat in the pear trees and visited fierce-looking bulls, and we looked for Debbie, our dog, who kept running away. Not
away
away, but just enjoying the freedom of no one shutting the gate.

7
     
    My sister and I started going to London on our own on the train, with a bit of cash and a
Whizzer and Chips
for me, and whatever book my sister was reading at the time. Ruby Ferguson or Gerald Durrell.
    Our trips to London began because although our mother was happy with the pills overall, she soon realized she