kate thompson

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Somebody is living in my house. Moving around in the corridor outside my bedroom door, going in and out of the bathroom, cleaning their teeth, flushing the lavatory. Who is it? Do they have my permission to be here? They’re not creeping around in a skulduggery fashion: from the confident way they’re walking you can tell that they assume they have a right to be here. I can’t call out to ask them who they are. If I do, I might give the impression that I am gaga. One would have to be gaga, wouldn’t one, not to know who is living in one’s own house? This is my house. Isn’t it?

The someone has come into my room, and is pulling back the curtains. I can tell by the shape that it is a woman.

‘Good morning!’ she says.

‘Good morning.’ Mustn’t let her think that I don’t know who she is. Don’t want her to -

‘It’s Tessa, Eleanor.’

‘Oh – Tessa. Yes – of course I know who you are.’ I know Tessa. Know her voice: her voice is light and friendly. Think I can trust her.

‘It’s a beautiful day,’ the girl called Tessa says.

‘Jolly good.’

‘I’ve some Crunchy-Nut Cornflakes here for you, the way you like them, with a little cream and some strawberries.’

‘Thank-you. I…’ Realise that I need the loo. ‘I need to spend a penny,’ I tell her.

‘All right. Let me help you up out of bed.’

She takes my hands and pulls. I stand up.

‘I’ll go and put the kettle on, shall I, for tea?’ she says.

‘Yes.’ Tea for two, and two for tea… I clutch the chest of drawers. ‘Which way is the bathroom?’

‘Out the door, to the left. I’ll show you.’ I follow her shadowy shape, and she opens a door. ‘Now. I’ll shut the door and leave you to it.’

She’s off.

I pull up my nightdress, sit down and look at my legs. Don’t like to look at my legs. They are hideous - like old sticks. Used to be very proud of them. They were my best feature once - apart from my face, of course, which was quite extraordinarily pretty. Could have been a film star when I was a girl – everybody said so. Looked a lot like Kay Francis. She was the living end: not a terribly good actress, but wonderfully stylish. I wonder what happened to her? They’re all dead now, probably, all those old film-stars. Norma Shearer, Constance Bennett, Claudette Colbert, Katharine Hepburn. All so glamorous, all so beautiful, all so young, once-upon-a-time. Like me. I suppose when one is young and beautiful and is surrounded by beaux it seems impossible that one should ever get old. Wonder how old I am? There’s great longevity in my family. Mother lived well into her eighties.

Spent my penny. Where now? Bedroom. It’s out there, isn’t it? To the right. I’m hobbling. That’s the very word to describe what I’m doing. Hobbling. I, who was once lady captain of the golf club, am now officially hobbling! What a joke. Oh - better hold on here, to the chest of drawers. In case I fall. That happened once. Fell down on the bedroom floor. That’s when the baby’s face came out of the wall. While I was lying there on the floor, I heard the baby calling to me. I knew it was living in another place, inside the wall. Told some people about it, in case it was a matter for the authorities, but I don’t think they believed me. Neither do they believe that I saw a couple of giraffes in the garden; but I did, with my own two eyes. I’m not so blind that I don’t recognise a giraffe when I see one.

Nearly there now. Sit down on the side of the bed and lie back, drawing up my poor old stick legs with an effort. Can hear someone down the corridor: in the kitchen, possibly. Is that where the kitchen is? They’re banging around, putting dishes away, by the sound of it. And there’s a radio playing. Now someone’s saying something. What? What are they saying? It sounds like –

‘I’ve brought you some tea.’

‘Who is it?’

‘It’s Tessa, Eleanor.’

‘Tessa? Oh.’ Tessa? Tessa is – who is she? ‘Did you marry someone I know?’

‘Yes, Eleanor. I married James.’

‘You married James? My son, James?’

‘Yes.’

‘You don’t mean to tell me that you two are married?’

‘We are.’

‘Why did nobody ever tell me? That’s great news! I’m so happy to hear that!’ I remember now that I like this girl with the kind voice, even though sometimes she speaks a little too quietly. Never been able to abide mumblers. I myself am very well-spoken - I even taught elocution once. ‘Well, welcome to our family, Tessa!’

‘Thank-you. Now, there’s your tea, on the table by your bed. And a pancake. But have your cornflakes first.’

She moves around to the other side of the bed.

‘I need another pillow,’ I say.

‘Yes. Here’s one. Shall I help hoosh you up?’

‘I can hoosh myself up.’

But she does it anyway, and plops another pillow behind my back. ‘Would you like me to put on the radio?’

‘No.’

She’s gone.

She always asks me if I want the radio. Can’t abide the blasted thing. There’s never anything on apart from bad news, and people shouting at you, hectoring you to buy things you don’t want.

I dip a spoon into the cornflakes. I like cornflakes. And that other thing she brought me – I like that too. What is it? A pancake. I eat very simply now. Small appetite. Used to adore seafood. Lobsters and oysters, particularly. My beaux used to tease me about the way I could put back a dozen oysters. They have aphrodisiac qualities, apparently. Wasted on me, now!

Finish my breakfast, lie back against the pillows. I like my bed. It is a sizable single bed. Always slept in single beds, even when I was married. Richard snored so loudly we had to have separate bedrooms. My bed is just the right size, and is piled with lots of soft, furry toy animals. There’s a lamb, and a dog, and a cat, and a tiger and a lion. Because I’m a Leo. The king of the beasts. Regal by name and regal by nature – that’s me.

There’s a kind of a fence thing on one side: suppose it’s in case I fall out. If that happened, I wonder would the baby in the wall come out again. Maybe it’s worried about me, the baby - the way I worry about my mother. She’s getting on, now. Rather think I may have to put her in a home.

The other thing I like about my bed, is that it acts as a time machine. Transports me back to the days when I was young and beautiful, and could dance and play tennis and golf. I was the lady captain of the golf club, you know. And I was an actress, too. Was cast as the second Mrs de Winter opposite Michael MacLiammoir, in a Gate Theatre production of Rebecca.

That photograph they took for publicity purposes! It was in all the papers. Michael, with his handsome, patrician profile, clutching me to his chest, my lovely eyes gazing into the middle distance. Michael always made sure that he presented his left profile to the camera. So good-looking was he that people always used to ask me if I had a thing for him! I’d laugh and say: ‘Not at all!’, and then they’d tell me that it was very odd that I didn’t have a thing for him, and I’d tell them that he was the ‘odd’ one out! I was very fond of Michael, but fonder still of Hilton Edwards, his ‘friend’. Such fun, those days! But hard, hard work – such long hours, and for so little money! When we had to rehearse late, I’d stay in the spare room in the big house on Eglinton Road. Belonged to my fiancé’s parents, that house.

My fiancé was very chuffed that I was an actress. Quite a famous one at that, in Dublin. It was he who had the photograph of me and Michael framed. Wonder where it is now, that photograph - and all the press cuttings? Used to feature a lot in the Society pages, I did: Miss Eleanor Beaufoy was seen taking tea in the foyer of the Shelbourne Hotel, wearing a meticulously tailored dove grey jersey costume… That sort of thing.  

The men from Pinewood saw my performance in Rebecca. They wanted to put me in the motion pictures. Suggested that I sign a contract, agreeing to make two motion pictures for them in England. Suppose I could have been another Maureen O’Hara or Vivien Leigh or June Duprez. But my parents didn’t want me to leave – war was looming. I might have made more of a fuss and insisted on going, if it had been Denham Studios and Mr Alexander Korda who had come calling instead of the men from Pinewood. But then, Alexander Korda was responsible for master-minding June Duprez’s career, and look what happened to her. Her career went on the skids after she went to Hollywood. I read somewhere that it was because she got too big for her boots. These boots are made for walking… Love that song!

I used to love reading the fan magazines. I had quite a collection of Film Pictorial annuals, all full of interviews with the stars, and pictures of them in their homes. Kay Francis was my favourite, because everyone said I looked like her. She was the most glamorous of them all – she was once voted the best-dressed star in America. And she was the highest-paid female star on the Warner Brothers lot. I wonder – had I signed that contract - would I have become a big star, too? Or would I have wound up subsisting on a diet of dog biscuits, the way June Duprez did? I read somewhere that she dipped them in marmalade.

Funny the way one’s life goes. Ups and downs, downs and ups. I don’t really do much any more, or go anywhere – unless it’s to my daughter’s house in England, in Worcestershire. I used to be able to get into my car and drive off to the West of Ireland any time the fancy took me. I had a place there, I seem to remember, overlooking Clew Bay. Yes, that’s right - I did! I remember how I came across it - quite by accident one day, when I was on a jaunt around county Mayo with my friend, the writer, Mary Lavin. We rounded a bend on a narrow road and climbed a lane, and suddenly found ourselves looking at the most breath-taking view either of us had ever seen. The crest of a hill, and below us Clew Bay with its three hundred and sixty-five islands – one for every day of the year. On the horizon, a perfect purple pyramid of a mountain: Croagh Patrick. A lark singing a mile high in the sky, and sun-diamonds ablaze on the water, and I fell in love at first sight.

Mary and I got out of the car and sat on a wall to admire the vista, and a man came by and said ‘Good Day’, and what did we think of the view? Because if I liked, he could let me buy an acre or two from him. We shook hands there and then – I always was impulsive! He was an artist, the man – I don’t recall his name - and I soon learned that, like Michael, he was a nancy-boy, and great fun. I used to buy his paintings. They weren’t very good paintings, but I bought them as a favour to him.

I’ve always surrounded myself with artistic people. When I was a very young woman, Louis le Brocquy painted a picture of me: The Spanish Shawl – it was called. Would have liked my parents to buy it, but they declined. The subject matter was considered rather risqué in those days: the painting showed me unchaperoned in a studio with two men. What a fuss over nothing! We were all just friends. I studied under Mainie Jellett then. I understand her paintings are worth a lot of money now. And so are Louis’s. I owned one of his early works. It used to hang above the fireplace in my sitting room. It’s gone now: I don’t know where.

No wonder - growing up surrounded by all those artistic people - that I should produce three artistic children. All grown now. A writer, an actor, and an artist. I have photographs of them in frames all over my house. And photographs of my grandchildren, and - I’m told - my great grandchildren. And photographs of that fantastic view from my place in the west. How I’d love to hop into my car, and drive there now! I’m a very good driver, you know. The only thing is, I’m not sure that the car that’s parked outside my house belongs to me. I wonder who could possibly own it, if it isn’t mine?  

People come sometimes, take me out for jaunts in their cars. They’re probably family, or friends. They dress me up and put a little powder on my face – but I do my own lipstick! Been able to do my own lipstick without the aid of a mirror for as long as I can remember. A perfect cupid’s bow. Anyway, these people bundle me in a car and take me to the Garden Centre in Wicklow, or to Powerscourt. We have lunch, and maybe a spin around the gardens. At Powerscourt they put me in what they call a ‘chariot’. I ask you! They’re humouring me. I know perfectly well that the ‘chariot’ is a wheelchair. I can’t walk far, you see. But I do like to feel the sun on my face, and see the colours of the gardens. Simple pleasures.

What other simple pleasures do I enjoy? The swing seat on my terrace: the motion is so soothing. And David Attenborough on the television. I can’t see the pictures – I really should get glasses - but I simply adore his voice. I could listen to David Attenborough forever. And I love to listen to stories on my cassette player. Agatha Christie, and PD James, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. They’re the best. Music? I’ve never really had much interest in music. But I do like that man – what’s his name? Bob Marley. He makes me happy. He’s coloured, you know.

My family has never had a problem with racism. I know they say that Ireland is a racist country, but some of my best friends were coloured. Errol and Edna in New York, and dear, dear Ferdie in Jamaica, and – oh – lots of others whose names I don’t remember now. I’ll never forget the time my best friend’s mother phoned me after I’d sent out invitations to a party, instructing me not to allow her daughter to dance with Ferdie. Honestly! I’ve never understood what all that nonsense is about. After all, we’re all the same under our skins. Just as I’ve never understood all the fuss about pansies. I think they call them ‘gay’ now. Some of the most amusing people I ever knew were so-called ‘gays’.

In the corridor outside my door, someone is moving around. I open my eyes. She’s inside the room, now, taking something out of my wardrobe. ‘Who is it?’

‘It’s Tessa, Eleanor.’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘It’s a beautiful day out there.’

‘Good.’ The sun has got his hat on, hip hip hip hooray! ‘Have the giraffes come back?’

‘Giraffes?’

‘Yes. Remember? I saw two of them in the garden the other day. They belong to one of my neighbours.’

‘Oh – you mean the peacocks, Eleanor.’

‘Oh, yes. I suppose I do.’

‘No, they haven’t come back. Now. I thought you might like a wash? And then you can go into the sitting room and I’ll bring lunch in to you.’

‘Oh.’

The washing is a bane. A bane! It was a long time before I could submit with good grace. It seemed like the ultimate indignity to stand stark naked in front of another person while they sponge bits of you that haven’t been exposed to the eyes of any human being for more years than I care to remember! Tch. I know, I know - it has to be done. As a treat, this person always sprinkles a little Chanel No 5 talcum powder on me after she’s dried under my arms. Dabs my wrists with a little of the same perfume, once I’m dressed.

Except I don’t get dressed now – unless I’m going out somewhere. Getting dressed is too exhausting. So every day I put on a fresh nightgown, with a long, ribbed cardigan over it. The cardigan is more elegant by far than a dressing gown. Wouldn’t be caught dead wearing a dressing gown during the day! Remember the film about the woman who’d let herself go so much that she ended up slopping around in her dressing gown morning, noon and night? No wonder her husband lost interest. To my mind, it is a wife’s duty to keep herself looking good for her husband. I imagine I am a positive fright to behold nowadays, but at least my cardigan and velvet slippers are fairly stylish. And I smell of Chanel No 5!

Submit to the washing. The less said about it the better.

‘Now Eleanor,’ says the girl, all business-like. ‘Shall we go into the sitting room?’

‘Yes. Where is it?’

‘Follow me.’

I follow her shape along an L-shaped corridor, turn the corner, and - there are no stairs! No stairs!! ‘Where are the stairs?’ I ask.

‘There are no stairs in this house, Eleanor.’

‘Oh, yes. I forgot. There were stairs in my old house, weren’t there?’

‘Yes.’

Light is flooding through a door at the end of the corridor. I move towards it. Know where I’m going now. Left through the door, then across the room to where my armchair is, by the fireplace. Lower myself into it with an effort. I know that the walk was not a long one, but I tire so easily now. What age am I?

A bunch of flowers – tulips, I think - on the side table by my armchair. ‘Where did those come from?’ I ask.

‘I got them for you yesterday, in Tesco’s.’

‘Oh – thank-you! They’re lovely.’

‘Yes, aren’t they? I chose yellow and red because they were the brightest.’

‘That’s very kind of you.’

‘You’re welcome. I’ll bring lunch in, in a minute. Are you comfortable?’

‘Yes. Perfectly, thanks.’  

She’s off again. I hear noises though the hatch that leads to the kitchen. It’s comforting, sometimes, to hear these noises. It means that there is someone in the house with me. At night I often wake, and struggle out of bed to check that there is someone sleeping in one of the spare rooms. I do not know why I feel the need to do this. It’s silly. After all, I’m perfectly able to look after myself.

More lunch-making sounds from behind the hatch. Lunch most days is soup, or chicken salad with a glass of milk. Ice-cream to follow. Then television, or one of my cassettes until it’s time for supper. Sometimes we watch the news before supper, but I don’t like to, much. Agitates me, all that ugliness. Murders, rape, abused children, wars, pollution, corruption. Seems to me that the world is a far, far uglier place than when I was young. Wonder what age I am, now? Getting on, I know. But I get by, somehow.

Breakfast, wash, lunch, television, supper. That’s how I get by. After supper we sometimes do the Simplex crossword in the Irish Times. I used to do it every day. Was very good at it. Nearly always got it out. But it frustrates me these days. Sometimes I can’t hear the girl when she runs clues by me, and I tell her to stop mumbling, even though I know it’s probably not her fault. It’s probably my fault because I am old and could well be half-deaf, for all I know. So I don’t mind if we don’t do the crossword any more. It’s not good for me to get upset before bed time. Means I may not sleep well. And I do love my sleep, and my bed. Bed time is precious. I may have told you that already?

Sometimes the girl reads me a story after I’ve got into bed. I love that – the stories are beautifully written – by Oscar Wilde, I think. But sometimes they can be very, very sad. The one about the giant who wouldn’t let the children play in his garden is especially sad…

Oh! How did I get here? Did I nod off? Where am I? In my sitting room? There’s a vase of what I think are tulips on the table beside my chair. Tulips, tulips – tulips from Amsterdam… Someone has come into the room.

‘Where did those come from?’ I ask.

‘I got them for you yesterday, in Tesco’s.’

‘Thank-you! They’re lovely.’

‘Yes. I chose yellow and red because they were the brightest.’

‘That’s very kind of you.’

 ‘You’re welcome. Lunch is ready.’

The girl is holding out her hands to me. I take them and she pulls me to my feet. I follow her across to the table. She has to help me to sit down – these old dining chairs really are fearfully heavy.

We’re both sitting, now. She raises her glass. ‘Cheers,’ she says.

‘Cheers, back.’ I raise my glass of milk, and smile. She’s smiling, too, I think.

‘I’ll eat this, now,’ I say, looking at my plate. ‘What is it?’

‘There’s chicken, cheese, tomatoes, brown bread and a little potato salad.’

‘Oh, good. I love potato salad.’

‘I know. I’ll prong some, for you, shall I? It’s a bit difficult to see, because it’s the same colour as the plate.’

She takes my fork, aims it at the plate, then hands it back to me.   

I chew on the potato. One potato, two potato, three potato, four… It’s funny, I muse. Don’t know how one gets by, really: one just does. Sam used to say it much better than I ever could. Samuel Beckett, that is. He used to play golf with my father, in Foxrock. The characters he wrote about all got by, didn’t they? Molloy, Malone, those two tramps, that old girl in the rubbish heap. What was the name of that play? Happy Days – something like that.

Me, I get by, too. But I wouldn’t go so far as to call these days happy. That would be as ridiculous as making believe that a wheel chair is a chariot. Or believing that I’m still as beautiful as I was in the portrait Louis made of me. How – exactly - do I get by? I suppose you could say that I get by with a little help from my friends. Yes. That’s it. I get by with a little help from my friends. Someone sang a song about that, once.

I get by with a little help from my friends… It sounds rather tuneless, when I sing. I never was able to hold much of a tune.

The girl sitting opposite me takes my fork, aims it at something on my plate, then hands it back to me.

‘Thank-you,’ I say. ‘What is it?’

© Kate Thompson, May 2007