Free Muriel Pulls It Off by Susanna Johnston

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 shouldI 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 certainlydid, 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