Imagined Selves by Willa Muir

Author:Willa Muir [Willa Muir]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781847675910
Publisher: Canongate Books
Published: 2009-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

ELEVEN

Annie and Mrs Rattray carried a small wooden trunk between them to the Carnegies’ house on a mild evening in May, and almost as inconspicuously as the trunk the new maid slipped into her place in the household. Miss Julia herself conducted Annie upstairs to the attic she was to share with Mrs Bruce and Betty; a neat single bed, with snowy sheets, had been set up for her in a corner, and she was entitled to two drawers in a tallboy beside it. When Annie had ranged her underwear in these drawers beside the new caps and aprons Miss Julia had given her she felt even more secure than when the shining, solid front door had closed behind her so massively yet so quietly; the drawers of the tallboy were also massive and they slid smoothly home, presenting an impenetrable front of grained and polished wood. It was as if she herself were enclosed in a dedicated, private sanctuary, as if she had walked out of a life of weekdays into an enduring Sabbath—not the precarious, open Sabbath that stretched to the sky, but a Sabbath roofed in like a church against the incalculable forces of night. Annie shut her trunk upon the few garments left in it, pushed it under her bed—a bed to herself!—and descended to the kitchen.

Here there was plenty of ordinary weekday bustle, for Betty was laying the table in the dining-room next door, and Mrs Bruce was peering into saucepans and lifting dishes out of the oven, but on the shelves and at the back of the great kitchen dresser a hierarchy of shining pans and dish-covers maintained a Sabbath-like specklessness and immobility. That Sabbath order, one felt, would soon be re-established in the whole of the kitchen, and Annie set to work cheerfully enough on the bowls and moulds and other cooking utensils which Mrs Bruce required her to clean.

‘That’s that, then,’ said Betty, smoothing her starched apron. ‘What’s your name, lassie?’

‘Annie Rattray.’

‘Mine’s Bet Bowman. Ha’e, would you like to have a look at the table? Dicht your hands and come through wi’ me.’

‘She’ll do no sic thing. You finish washing up, Annie.’

Betty tossed her head: ‘You dish up the dinner, then, and dinna keep me waiting.’

Annie bent over her wash-basin in non-committal silence. Betty was friendly in her manner and Mrs Bruce unfriendly; Betty was starched and glossy and neat, Mrs Bruce flushed and a little dishevelled. But there were Christians and Christians, even in this house, apparently; it would be as well to wait and see whom Miss Julia favoured.

The gong was sounded and a rustling next door announced that the ladies had come in. Smartly, efficiently, Betty appeared and reappeared between courses, saying little and whisking off with a dispatch that encouraged Annie to side with her. Betty, after all, neat and jimp in her uniform, stood very near to the ladies in the dining-room, while Mrs Bruce and Annie had to stay in the outer court of the kitchen.

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