Chapter 29: The Rota
Roz was in the kitchen at half past seven with her hands in flour and the radio off, which is how she works when the house is awake and she would rather not be heard thinking.
I said I wanted to read the books. Not that one. The ones on the shelf.
She did not look up. “Which months?”
“March to now.”
“That is two books.”
“Yes.”
She wiped her hands and took both down and set them on the end of the table, on a folded towel, because that table is scrubbed at six and she is not sentimental about paper.
“They do not leave the kitchen,” she said.
I said they would not.
“And you do not write in them.”
“No.”
That was the whole negotiation.
I had the graph paper and the ruler and I sat at the end of the table with my back to the range.
It took two hours and forty minutes that morning, and another two after supper, and I ruined one sheet by starting the columns too far to the left.
Here is what I want understood about that day, because it is the only part of this account I am proud of.
I did not look up the nineteen dates.
I copied all of them.
Every day from the eleventh of March to the second of September, in order, with the empty days written in as empty. One hundred and seventy-six rows.
If you only check the days you are interested in, you will find what you came for.
That is not a method. That is a mirror.
I did not have the word for what I was avoiding. I had the shape of it, from three years of lectures I never finished.
The columns were Roz’s, not mine. Date. Who was in. Who was out. How many for dinner. Anything unusual.
Her notation is not consistent, which took an hour to accept.
Mr. V — out. Mr. V — away. Mr. V — HOU. Mr. V — city. Mr. V, and nothing after it.
So I wrote a definition at the top of my sheet before I copied a single line.
OUT = did not sleep in this house that night.
Eleven days I could not decide. I marked them with a question mark and left them.
Later I asked Roz about them one at a time, and she answered nine of the eleven from memory without pausing.
Twenty-eight years.
“Why do you write down who is in?” I said.
“Because if I make eight breakfasts for six people, that is two breakfasts of somebody’s money in the bin.”
I have never heard a better description of a household.
At four o’clock I got three minutes with Victor Blackwood in the hall.
I had asked Mr. Foyle for five. Mr. Foyle had said he would see.
What actually happened is that Victor came through with his coat over his arm and saw me and stopped, which is worse than being refused.
I said, “It is nineteen times, Mr. Blackwood. Since March. Nineteen.”
He stood there holding the coat, and I watched a man decide, quite visibly, that he would deal with this properly later.
“I know he’s been unwell.”
“Nineteen episodes. I have the dates and the times of onset. Dr. Moreno has every one of them.”
“I’ve asked his office for a summary.”
He had asked for a summary. He had asked for it on the eighteenth. It was the twenty-third.
“There’s a process,” he said. “I’ve instructed Ellis. I’m not going to move on any of it until I understand it properly.”
Then he said the thing I have never been able to forgive, and he said it kindly.
“Do you need money, Lily? While this is being sorted out.”
I said no.
“The agency can find you something. With a good reference. I’d write it myself.”
So there it was. Two doors, both of them open, both of them out.
He put his coat on.
He was not being cruel. He was doing what he had done for two years, which is to convert a situation into an arrangement.
I went back to the kitchen, and I would like to be able to say I was angry, but what I actually felt was the specific tiredness of somebody who has just been handled well.
I copied the last of it between nine and eleven. My hand ached and twice I dropped a line and had to go back.
At ten past eleven Roz came in to set the proving basket and stood behind me for a while.
She did not read over my shoulder. She looked at the top of the sheet, where the headings were.
“You are copying everything,” she said.
“Yes.”
“But that is the column you keep looking at.”
I put the pen down.
She was pointing at the fourth column. I had ruled it twice, on both sides, and labeled it with two letters, and I had not noticed doing either.
V — OUT.