The Rose Garden by Maeve Brennan

Author:Maeve Brennan [Brennan Maeve]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781619026537
Publisher: Counterpoint

The Holy Terror

She was the ladies’-room lady in the sedate Royal Hotel in Dublin. Mary Ramsay, rough-voiced, rough-handed, rough-mannered in every way. Her tongue would take the skin off you, they said in the hotel. They were all afraid of her.

In the ladies’ room, if she happened to turn her back on you (maybe to get a towel, or the coat brush) you would see how that great swollen rump of hers rolled and heaved across the floor. She was tormented with arthritis—legs, arms, everywhere. It pained her to stand, and it pained her to sit down, and when she was still for any length of time the stiffness forced her to get up and move about. Her loose men’s slippers, slit at the sides for further comfort, left her flat-footed; and then the great big legs began; all wrapped in black wool stockings, they pressed up under the skirts and out of sight into unimaginable depths and darkness of folded, petted flesh. She was well fed, that one.

It was a miracle, they all said later, how she lasted so long at the hotel, especially in that job, where you usually look to see someone neat and tidy, even if she isn’t so young. But on the day the blow fell, everything in the ladies’ room was as it had been for twenty years, which was the length of time Mary Ramsay had been queening it there. She had been with the hotel for thirty-seven years, doing one thing or another. There was no denying the fact that she had given her life to the place.

She had a shabby, low-seated bamboo chair set in beside a screen in the corner of the outer room, where the mirrors and dressing tables were. Sitting in that chair, with one cushion under her and one at her back, she had a full view of everything that went on, and yet she was screened from the door. There she sat the better part of the time, and there she took her meals, too, between the rush hours, from a tray on the table beside her.

She had collected privileges with her years of service. She still had her own little comfortable room on the top floor, although most of the hotel employees had to board out, with things as crowded as they were. That room of hers contained everything she owned, but she had money in the bank. She delighted in saving, and the tips mounted up.

In her bedroom she slept, and conferred there occasionally with her crony Mrs. Bailey, the oldest switchboard operator. The rest of the time, from ten in the morning until ten at night, she sat down among the mirrors and washbasins of the ladies’ room. She seldom if ever took her day off. The ladies’ room was her theater and her kingdom. She hated to miss a minute there. The power she had.

Her thick gray hair was done up in a bird’s nest on her head, and underneath, those bland mean eyes of hers looked you through and through.

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