Alfred and Emily by Doris Lessing Read Free Book Online Page B

Emily, it seemed to her, had walked away from her, and her experience of her, when she had taken off into a state of – it seemed to Daisy – unnatural and wild exultation, planning that amazing wedding. That had not been the Emily she knew or had ever known.
    Daisy was working for final examinations, which would make her an examiner of nurses. Her concentration on a goal was as fine as Emily’s, but not so near an edge of instability. Daisy and her old colleagues had remarked that Emily did not seem herself these days, and so had Mrs. Lane, Daisy’s mother.
    Emily wept a good deal in private, concealed red eyes and a need to sigh deeply and long…but she could not conceal her state from the servants, all four of them, the housekeeper (‘who has been with me since my mother died’), the housemaid, the maid-of-all-work, the cook. Emily was irritable and often unreasonable, and they left.
    â€˜You are not the only woman who cannot deal with her servants,’ was what her loving husband said to her. ‘Well, get some more.’
    But Emily, like her husband’s colleagues’ wives, complained about the servant problem, which was fast becoming a major crisis for the middle and upper classes.
    The plenitude and wealth of Edwardian England had not ended. This was a time of great prosperity – well, it was for the said classes. And the servants were deciding that to work in private houses with their restrictions and rules was not for them. Within a mile or so of Clarges Street there were a new glove factory (‘French’ gloves), a French milliner, an upholsterer whose other shop was in Paris, a luxurious chocolate shop, a department store whose five floors were crammed with fashion and frivolity. And the craze for everything Russian, Mir. That was where Emily’s servants had gone. She advertised in newspapers, applied to agencies, but she had a single housemaid and a maid-of-all-work and no one to wait at table. She wrote to Mrs. Lane asking if the country girls might like to come and work for her. There was accommodation – well, of a sort – but Mrs. Lane wrote back to say that the girls these days didn’t want to do housework.
    Meanwhile Emily remained so low, so sad, that her husband, noticing it, prescribed a tonic. He remarked, too, that Emily seemed to be spending a lot of time with nurses at Chestnut Street. And he suggested that this wife or that wife of his colleagues would surely be more suitable company.
    Mary Lane was not surprised. She had thought from thestart that when the glitter of that wedding had worn off, Emily would be needing advice. From the moment she had seen the photograph of Emily’s fiancé, her heart had sunk. ‘Yes, it did sink into my boots,’ she had told Daisy, who had said that Emily was not the old Emily, but perhaps this doctor of hers would be right for her new state, which was all fashion and furniture.
    Emily and Mrs. Lane sat outside the little house in garden chairs, where the road that led to the station was visible.
    Mrs. Lane waited for Emily’s revelations, and chatted. A plump fair woman appeared in the lane with a pram, in which were two infants.
    â€˜That’s Betsy, you know, Alfred’s wife,’ said Mrs. Lane, and called out.
    â€˜It’s late for their lunch,’ called back Betsy, but wheeled the pram, bought by Mr. Redway – ‘You deserve the best money can buy’ – a little way up the path.
    â€˜They are lovely babes; they are twin boys,’ said Mrs. Lane, waving at the three. ‘Betsy, do come soon and let me indulge myself.’
    Mrs. Lane, with the new twins down the lane, had hardly been able to tear herself away, but then Betsy had said that she felt she could manage now, and Mrs. Lane restricted her visits.
    Betsy wheeled the pram near to the two women lolling in their chairs.
    The babes were certainly most delightful, and Mrs. Lane fussed a bit