Exercises

How Soon Can I Leave?

by Susan Hill

The two ladies who lived together were called Miss Bartlett and Miss Roscommon.

Miss Roscommon, the older and stouter of the two, concealed her fear of life behind frank reference to babies and lavatories and the sexing of day-old chicks. It was well known that she had travelled widely as a girl, she told of her walking tours in Greece, and how she had driven an ambulance during the Spanish Civil War .

Miss Bartlett, who was only forty, cultivated shyness and self-effacement, out of which arose her way of leaving muttered sentences to trail off into the air, unfinished. Oh, do not take any notice of anything I may say, she meant, it is of no consequence, I am sorry to have spoken ...But the sentences drew attention to her, nevertheless.
    "What was that?" people said, "I beg your pardon, I didn't quite catch...Do speak up..." And so, she was forced to repeat herself and they, having brought it upon themselves, were forced to listen. She also protested helplessness in the face of everyday tools. It was Miss Roscommon who peeled all the potatoes and defrosted the refrigerator and opened the tins.

Their house, one of two white bungalows overlooking the bay, was called Tuscany.

When Miss Bartlett had finally come to live with Miss Roscommon, seven years before, each one believed that the step was taken for the good of the other. Miss Bartlett had been living in one of the little stone cottages, opposite the harbour, working through the winter on the stock that she sold, from her front room and on a trestle outside, in summer. From November until March, there were no visitors to Mountsea. Winds and rain scoured the surface of the cliffs and only the lifeboat put out to sea. Miss Roscommon had taken to inviting Miss Bartlett up to the bungalow for meals.

"You should have a shop," she had begun by saying, loading Miss Bartlett's plate with scones and home-made ginger jam, "properly equipped and converted. It cannot be satisfactory having to display goods in your living-room. Why have you not thought of taking a shop?"

Miss Bartlett made marquetry pictures of the church, the lighthouse and the harbour, table-lamps out of lobster pots and rocks worked over with shells. She also imported Italian straw baskets and did a little pewter work.

The idea of a shop had come to her, and been at once dismissed, in the first weeks after her coming to Mountsea. She was too timid to take any so definite a step, for, by establishing herself in a shop, with her name written up on a board outside, was she not establishing herself in the minds of others, as a shopkeeper? As a girl, she had been impressed by her mother's constant references to her as dreamy and artistic, so that she could not possibly now see herself in the role of shopkeeper.Also, by having her name written up on that board, she felt that she would somehow be committing herself to Mountsea, and by doing that, finally abandoning all her hopes of a future in some other place. As a girl, she had looked out at the world, and seen a signpost, with arms pointing in numerous different directions, roads leading here, or here, or there. She had been quite unable to choose which road to take for, having once set out upon any of them, she would thereby be denying herself all the others. And what might I lose, she had thought, what opportunities shall I miss if I make the wrong choice?

    So that, in the end, she had never chosen, only drifted through her life from this to that, waking every morning to the expectation of some momentous good fortune dropped in her lap.

"That cottage is damp," said Miss Roscommon, allowing her persuasions to take on a more personal note, as they got to know one another better. "I do not think you look after yourself properly. And a place of business should not have to double as a home."

At first, Miss Bartlett shrank from the hints and persuasions, knowing herself to be easily swayed, fearful of being swept along on the tide of Miss Roscommon's decision. I am only forty years old, she said, there is plenty of opportunity left for me, I do not have to abandon hope by retreating into middle age, and life with another woman. Though certainly she enjoyed the meals the other cooked; the taste of home-baked pasties and stews and herb-flavoured vegetables.

"I'm afraid that I cannot cook," she said. "I live on milk and cheese and oven-baked potatoes. I would not know where to begin in the kitchen." It did not occur to her that this was any cause for shame, and Miss Roscommon tut-tutted and floured the pastry-board, relieved to have, once again, a sense of purpose brought into her life.

"There were nine of us in the family," she said, "and I was the only girl. At the age of seven, I knew how to bake a perfect loaf of bread. I am quite content to be one of the Marthas of this world."

But I will not go and live there, Miss Bartlett told herself, towards the end of that summer. I am determined to remain independent, my plans are fluid, I have many work, and besides, it would never do, we might not get on well together and then it would be embarrassing for me to have to leave. And people might talk.

Though she knew that they would not, and that it was of her own judgment that she was most afraid, for Mountsea was full of ladies of indeterminate age, sharing houses together.

The winter came, and the cottage was indeed damp. The stone walls struck cold all day and all night, in spite of expensive electric heaters, and Miss Bartlett spent longer and longer afternoons at Tuscany, even taking some of her work up there, from time to time.

At the beginning of December, the first of the bad storms sent waves crashing up over the quayside into the front room.

Of course, Miss Roscommon is lonely, she said now, she has need of me, I should have realized. That type of woman, who appears to be so competent and strong, feels the onset of old age and infirmity more than most, but she cannot say so, cannot give way and confess to human weakness. She bakes me cakes and worries about the dampness in my house because she needs my company and concern for herself.

And so, on Christmas Eve, when the second storm filled Miss Bartlett's living-room with water up to the level of the window seat, she allowed herself to be evacuated by the capable Miss Roscommon up to the white bungalow.

"It will not be for good," she said anxiously, "when the weather improves, I shall have to go back, there is the business to be thought of." "We shall make plans for a proper shop," said Miss Roscommon firmly, "I have a little money..."

She filled up a pottery bowl with leek soup, having acquired her faith in its restorative powers when she had set up a canteen at the scene of a mining disaster in the nineteen-twenties.

Miss Bartlett accepted the soup and a chair close to the fire and an electric blanket for her bed, thereby setting the seal on the future pattern of their relationship. By the beginning of February, plans for the shop were made, by mid-March, the work was in hand. There was no longer any talk of her moving, she would sell her goods from the new shop during the summer days, but she would live at Tuscany. The garage was fitted with light, heat and two extra windows, and made into a studio.

"This is quite the best arrangement," said Miss Roscommon, "here, you will be properly fed and looked after, I shall see to that."

    Over the seven years that followed, Miss Bartlett came to rely upon her for many more things than the comforts of a well-kept home. It was Miss Roscommon who made all the business arrangements for the new shop, who saw the bank manager, the estate agent and the builder, Miss Roscommon who advised with the orders and the accounts. During the summer seasons, the shop did well, and after three years, at her friend's suggestion, Miss Bartlett started to make pink raffia angels and pot-pourri jars, for the Christmas postal market.

She relaxed, ceased to feel uneasy, and if, from time to time she did experience a sudden shot of alarm, at seeing herself so well and truly settled, she said, not, "Where else would I go?" but, "I am needed here. However would she manage without me? It would be cruel to go." All the decisions were left to Miss Roscommon. "You are so much better at these things ..." Miss Bartlett said, and drifted away to her studio, a small woman with pastel-coloured flesh.

Perhaps it was her forty-seventh birthday that jolted her into a renewed awareness of the situation. She looked into the mirror on that morning, and saw middle-age settled irrevocably over her features. She was reminded of her dependence upon Miss Roscommon.

I said I would not stay here, she thought, would never have my name written up above a permanent shop, for my plans were to remain fluid. And now it is seven years, and how many opportunities have I missed? How many roads are closed to me?

Or perhaps it was the visit of Miss Roscommon's niece Angela, and her husband of only seven days, one weekend in early September.

"I shall do a great deal of baking," Miss Roscommon said, "for they will certainly stay to tea. We shall have cheese scones and preserves and a layer cake."

"I did not realize that you had a niece."

Miss Roscommon rose from the table heavily, for she had put on weight, over the seven years. There had also been some suspicion about a cataract in her left eye, another reason why Miss Bartlett told herself she could not leave her.

"She is my youngest brother's child. I haven't seen her since she was a baby."

Miss Bartlett nodded and wandered away from the breakfast table, not liking to ask why there had been no wedding invitation. Even after seven years, Miss Roscommon kept some of her secrets, there were subjects upon which she simply did not speak, though Miss Bartlett had long ago bared her own soul.

The niece Angela, and her new husband, brought a slab of wedding cake, which was put to grace the centre of the table, on a porcelain stand.

"And this," said Miss Roscommon triumphantly, "this is my friend, Miss Mary Bartlett." For Miss Bartlett had hung behind in the studio for ten minutes after their arrival, out of courtesy and because it was always something of a strain for her to meet new people.

"Mary is very shy, very retiring," her own mother had always said, "she is artistic you see, she lives in her own world." Her tone had always been proud and Miss Bartlett had therefore come to see her own failure as a mark of distinction. Her shyness had been cultivated, readily admitted to.

The niece and her husband sat together on the sofa, a little flushed and self-conscious in new clothes. Seeing them there, Miss Bartlett realized for the first time that no young people had ever been inside the bungalow, since her arrival. But it was more than their youthfulness which struck her, there was an air of suppressed excitement about them, a glitter, the emanated pride in the satisfactions of the flesh.

Miss Roscommon presided over a laden tea-table, her face still flushed from the oven.

"And Miss Bartlett is very clever," she told them, "she makes beautiful things. You must go down to the shop and see them, buy something for your new home."

"You make things?" said Angela, through a mouthful of shortbread, "what sort of things?"

Miss Bartlett made a little gesture of dismissal with her hand. "Oh, not very much really, nothing at all exciting. Just a few little ... I'm sure you wouldn't ..." She let her voice trail off, but it was Miss Roscommon and not the niece Angela who took her up on it.

"Now that is just nonsense," she said firmly. "There is no virtue in this false modesty, I have told you before. Of course Angela will like your things, why should she not? Plenty of visitors do, and there is nothing to be ashamed of in having a talent."

   "I wore a hand-embroidered dress," said the niece Angela, "for my wedding."

Miss Bartlett watched her, and watched the new husband, whose eyes followed Angela's slim hand as it moved over to the cake plate and back, and up into her mouth. Their eyes met and shone with secrets, across the table. Miss Bartlett's stomach moved a little, with fear and excitement. She felt herself to be within touching distance of some very important piece of knowledge.

"Do you help with this shop, then─?" asked the husband though without interest.

"Oh, no! Well, here and there with the accounts and so forth, because Mary doesn't understand any of that, she is such a dreamer! No, no, that is not my job, that is not what keeps me so busy. My job is to look after Mary, of course. I took that upon myself quite some time ago, when I saw that I was needed. She is such a silly girl, she lives in a world of her own and if I were not here to worry about her meals and her comforts, she would starve, I assure you, simply starve."

"Oh, I don't think I really..."

"Of course you would," said Miss Roscommon. "Now let me have your cup to be filled."

The young couple exchanged another glance, of comprehension and amusement. How dare you, thought Miss Bartlett, almost in tears with anger and frustration, at being so looked upon and judged and misunderstood. What do you know of it, how can you sit there so smugly? It is because you are young and know nothing. It is all very well for you.

"All the same," said the niece Angela, sitting back in her chair, "it's nice to be looked after, I must say."

She smiled like a cat.

"Yes, that has always been my role in life, that is my talent," said Miss Roscommon, "to do all the looking after." She leaned over and patted Miss Bartlett on the hand. "She is my responsibility now, you see," she told them confidently. "My little pussy-cat."

Miss Bartlett pushed the hand away and got to her feet, her face flushed with shame and annoyance. "What a foolish thing to say! Of course I am not, how very silly you make me look. I am a grown woman, I am quite capable of looking after myself."

Miss Roscommon, not in the least discomfited, only began to pour the tea dregs into a slop basin, smiling.
    When they were about to leave, Miss Bartlett said, "I will walk down the hill with you, and we shall drop in for a minute at the shop. Yes, I insist ... But not for you to buy anything. You must choose a wedding present from my stock, it is the very least I can do." For she wanted to keep them with her longer, to be seen walking in their company down the hill away from the bungalow, wanted to be on their side.

"You will need a warm coat, it is autumn now, the evenings are drawing in. Take your mohair."

"Oh, leave me, leave me, do not fuss." And Miss Bartlett walked to the end of the gravelled drive, while the niece and her new husband made their good-byes.

"I am afraid it is all she has to worry over nowadays," she said hastily, the moment they had joined her. "It gives her pleasure, I suppose, to do all that clucking round and I have not the heart to do anything but play along, keep up appearances. If it were not for me, she would be so lonely. Of course, I have had to give up a good deal of my own life, on that account."

The niece Angela took her husband's arm. "It must be very nice and comfortable for you there," she said, "all the same."

Miss Bartlett turned her face away and looked out to sea. Another winter, she thought, and I am now forty-seven years old. You do not understand.

She detained them in the shop for as long as possible, fetching out special items from the stock room and taking time over the wrapping paper. Let me be with you, she wanted to say, let me be on your side, for do you not see that I still have many opportunities left, I am not an old woman, I know about the world and the ways of modern life? Take me with you.

But when they had gone she stood in the darkening shop and saw that they had already placed and dismissed her, that she did not belong with them and there was no hope left. She sat on the stool beside the till and wept, for the injustice of the world and the weakness of her own nature. I have become what I've always dreaded becoming, she said, everything has slipped through my fingers.

And for all of it, after a short time, she began to blame Miss Roscommon. She has stifled me, she thought, she preys upon me, I am treated as her child, her toy, her pussy-cat, she has humiliated me and fed off my dependence and the fact that I have always been so sensitive. She is a wicked woman. And then she said, but I do not have to stay with her. Fortified by the truth of this new realization, Miss Bartlett blew her nose, and walked back up the hill to Tuscany.

"You cannot leave," said Miss Roscommon, " what nonsense, of course you cannot. You have nowhere else to go and besides in ten days' time we'll set off for our holiday in Florence."

"You will set off. I am afraid my plans have now changed." Miss Bartlett could not now bear the thought of being seen with her friend in all the museums and art galleries of Florence, discussing the paintings in loud, knowledgeable voices and eating whole meal sandwiches out of neat little greaseproof bags, speaking very slowly to the Italians. This year Miss Roscommon must go alone. She did not allow herself to think of how, or whether she would enjoy herself. We are always hearing of how intrepid she was as a girl, she thought. Then let her be intrepid again.

    Aloud, she said, "I am going back to live at the cottage." For she had kept it on, and rented it to summer visitors.

Miss Roscommon turned herself, and her daming, a little more towards the light. "You are being very foolish," she said mildly. "But I understand why, it is your age, of course."

Appalled, Miss Bartlett went through to her room, and began to throw things furiously, haphazardly, into a suitcase. I am my own mistress, she said, a grown-up woman with years ahead of me, it is time for me to be firm. I have pandered to her long enough.

The following day, watched by Miss Roscommon, she moved back down the hill to the cottage. She would, she decided, stay there for a while, give herself time to get accustomed, and to gather all other things around her again, and then she would look out and make plans, take steps towards her new life.

That evening, hearing the wind around her own four walls, she said, I have escaped. Though she woke in the night and was aware of being entirely alone in the cottage, of not being able to hear the loud breathing of Miss Roscommon in the room next door.

She expected the Italian holiday to be cancelled, on some pretext, and was astonished when Miss Roscommon left, on the appointed day and alone. Miss Bartlett took the opportunity of going up to Tuscany and fetching some more of her things down, work from the studio to keep her busy in the evening, and during the days, too, for now it was October and few people came into the shop.

Here I am, she said, twisting the raffia angels and winding ribbon around the pot-pourris, etching her gift cards, here I am, living my own life and making my own decisions. She wanted to invite someone down to stay, someone young, so that she could be seen and approved of, but there was no one. A search through all the drawers and cupboards at the bungalow did not yield her the address of the niece Angela. She would have sent a little note, with a Christmas gift, to tell of her removal, prove her independence.

Miss Roscommon returned from Italy, looked rather tired and not very suntanned. She came in with a miniature plaster copy of a Donatello statue, and some fine art post-cards. Miss Bartlett made tea, and the conversation was very stilted.

"You are not warm enough here," said Miss Roscommon, "I will send down some extra blankets."

"Oh no, thank you. Please don't do that."
     But the following day the blankets, and a Dutch apple pie, arrived with the butcher's boy.

Miss Bartlett bought huge slabs of cheese and eggs, which she could boil quite well, and many potatoes, and ate them off her knee while she read detective stores through the long evenings. She thought that she might buy a television set for company, though she was busy too, with the postal orders for Christmas. When all this is over, she told herself, that is when I shall start looking about me and making my plans. She thought of all the things she might have done as a girl, the studio in London and the woodblock engravings for the poetry press, the ballet company for whom she might have been asked to do some ethereal costume designs. She read in a newspaper of a woman who had started her own firm, specializing in computer management, at the age of fifty and was now rather wealthy, wholly respected in a man's world. Miss Bartlett looked at herself in the mirror. I am only forty-seven, she said.

In her white bungalow, lonely and lacking a sense of purpose, Miss Roscommon waited.

On November the seventh, the first of the storms came, and Miss Bartlett sat in her back room and heard the wind and the crashing of the sea, terrified. The next morning, she saw that part of the pierhead had broken away. Miss Roscommon sent down a note, with a meat pasty, via the butcher's boy.

"I am worried about you," she wrote, "you cannot be looking after yourself, and I know that it is damp in that cottage. Your room here is ready for you at any time."

Miss Bartlett tore the note up and threw the pasty away, but she thought of the warm bed, the fires and soft sofas at Tuscany.

Two days later, when the gales began again, Miss Roscommon came herself, and hammered at the door of the cottage, but Miss Bartlett hid upstairs, behind a cheval mirror, until she went away. This time, there was no note, only a thermos flask of lentil soup on the doorstep.

She is suffocating me, thought Miss Bartlett, I cannot bear all these unwanted attentions, I only wish to be left alone. It is a poor thing if a woman of her age and resources can find nothing else to occupy her, nothing else to live for. But in spite of herself, she drank the soup, and the taste of it, the smell of the steam rising up into her face reminded her of all the meals at Tuscany, the winter evenings spent happily sitting beside the fire.

When the storms came again, another section of the pier broke away, the lifeboat put out to sea and sank with all hands, and the front room of Miss Bartlett's cottage was flooded, rain broke in through a rent in the roof. She lay all night, too terrified by the roaring of the wind and seas to get out of bed and do anything about it, only whimpering a little with cold and fright, remembering how close the cottage came to the water, how vulnerable she was.

As a child, she had been afraid of all storms, gales and thunder and cloudbursts drumming on the roof, and her mother had understood, wrapped her in a blanket and taken her into her own bed.

"It is because you have such a vivid imagination," she had said, "you feel things that the other, ordinary little children, cannot ever feel." And so, nothing had been done to conquer this praiseworthy fear of storms.

Now, I am alone, thought Miss Bartlett, there is no one, my mother is dead, and who is there to shelter and understand me? A flare rocket, sent up from the sinking lifeboat, lit up the room faintly for a second, and then she knew who there was, and that everything would be all right. On the stormy nights, Miss Roscommon always got up and made sandwiches and milky hot drinks, brought them to her as she lay awake in bed, and they would sit reading nice magazines, in the gentle circle of the bedside lamp.

I have been very foolish, Miss Bartlett thought, and heard herself saying it aloud, humbly, to Miss Roscommon. A very foolish, selfish woman, I do not deserve to have you as a friend.

She did not take very much with her up the hill on the following morning, only a little handcase and some raffia work. The rest could follow later, and it would be better to arrive like that, it would be a real indication of her helplessness.

The landscape was washed very clean and bare and pale, but the sea churned and moved within itself, angry and battleship grey. In the summer, Miss Bartlett thought, refreshed again by the short walk, it will be time to think again, for I am not committing myself to any permanent arrangements and things will have to be rather different now, I will not allow myself to be treated as a pet plaything, that must be understood. For she had forgotten, in the cold, clear morning, the terrors of the previous night.

She wondered what to do, ring the bell or knock or simply open the back door into the kitchen, where Miss Roscommon would be working, and stand there, case in hand, waiting to be forgiven. Her heart beat a little faster. Tuscany was very settled and reassuring in its low, foursquare whiteness on top of the hill. Miss Bartlett knocked timidly at the blue kitchen door.

It was some time before she gave up knocking and ringing, and simply went in. Tuscany was very quiet.

She found her in the living-room, lying crumpled awkwardly on the floor, one of her legs twisted underneath her. Her face was a curious, flat colour, like the inside of a raw potato. Miss Bartlett drew back the curtains. The clock had stopped just before midnight, almost twelve hours ago. For a moment, she stood there, still holding her little case, in the comfortable, chintzy room, and then she dropped down on to her knees, and took the head of Miss Roscommon into her lap and, rocking and rocking, cradling it like a child, Miss Bartlett wept.

(4 641 words)

(From The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Norton & Company, 1986 )

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