Free A Start in Life by Anita Brookner

straight into the housekeeping.
    Sally, he reflected, must be lonely. How could he cheer her up? He had noticed a transistor radio in the kitchen and the largest size of colour television in the sitting room. Perhaps a record player? He could rig it up for her, placing the speakers at what he considered to be ideal intervals. The chairs would have to be moved slightly; no matter. He could spend the odd evening there. No, he admonished himself; they need me at home. He would never get away with it, anyway. But perhaps they could go back to Bayswater in the afternoons? Or he could drive her home a little earlier than usual? Delightful prospects for the winter began to open up in front of him. There was no reason why he should not keep them all happy. And with Ruth at home again, until she went to France – and he really couldn’t see why she had to go – there was not much point in his doing the shopping.
    He reached home in a fine humour to find Helen and Mrs Cutler having a difference of opinion. It had apparently started shortly after he had left in the late morning and had rumbled on all day. Consequently very little had been done in the flat and last night’s washing up was still on the draining board in the kitchen. It was perhaps unfortunate that Helen, wandering in in her nightgown after George’s departure, and intending to cut herself a slice of bread and butter, should have knocked over a jar of marmalade which had shattered on the floor. Mrs Cutler, suffering from her usual headache, which lasted until midday, had enjoined Helen, who had wandered back to bed, to clear up the mess. Helen, deprived of her breakfast, and also a little headachy, turned her head very slowly – a gesture for which she had been celebrated in her heyday – and said, ‘Darling Maggie, you can’t be serious.’ She gave a little laugh to indicate incredulity. It was the first bit of acting she had done for some years.
    Mrs Cutler, who was no actress, nevertheless had her reserves. Pregnant silences alternating with tuneless whistling, the bathroom door left open, and a refusal to change out of her slippers, eventually modulated into an announcement that there was nothing for lunch and that she was damned if she was going out with all that mess to clear up. Helen then decided that a short course in Christian Science principles might help Maggie to overcome her problems and gave her a small book to read. This had been sent to her by her friend Molly Edwards, an elderly comedy actress now living in retirement in Hove, and relegated to the bedside table where it kept company with several novels by Georgette Heyer.
    ‘I found it
immensely
helpful,’ said Helen, knocking the dust from it and presenting it to Mrs Cutler. ‘And could we have a cup of tea?’
    ‘No time, if I’m going to read this,’ replied Mrs Cutler with great satisfaction. She could go without food inde
finitely. She not only read it, she read it aloud, frequently popping in to ask Helen’s advice on a passage with which she disagreed. They were both enjoying themselves in a dangerous kind of way and it seemed only natural that they should have a heated discussion of some of the finer points over a large whisky. After all, they could not eat until George came home with the food. As they had had nothing all day the drinks went to their heads, and their voices were raised when George put his key in the door. Mamma always knew when I was coming home, he thought.
    George exerted himself to calm the two women down but could barely intervene in their debate, which had now reached major proportions. Leaving them to it, he retired to the kitchen and made the tongue up into sandwiches, arranging them carefully on a plate. He went to the dining room and fetched three of his mother’s napkins, stiff with starch; these he added to the tray which he took into the bedroom. He placed the tray on the bed, between Helen and Mrs Cutler, who both reached out a hand automatically and