The 'relationship' between the lady and myself started to misfire.. falter openly, spending more time back at Clapton Common, less, suffocated by restrictive clauses in my existence. Lay on my bed watch the ceiling, avoiding my reflection in the mirrors. The flat had become a shambles through neglect, plants sagging. The aquarium, nothing but green slime, a few surviving fish still managing to slowly gyrate amongst the weed. Little enthusiasm on my part for cleaning up hardly saw the point, the place so big, so empty. Ruth had always been here. From the beginning, her family had demanded 'something' from me... something more than the horrific room we had at Queens Drive, Finsbury Park. Yet we had both been quite happy there, totally undisturbed by a world that crept by our huge crumbling bay window with its partition down one side, a sink and cooker crammed into the so called, Kitchen.
Ruth had made sporadic attempts into domesticity, the ever present subject of shopping and cooking mostly avoided by getting up about mid day and simply going out to lunch. Anything like cooking, my department. A workshop broom took care of the floors, the polish I had worked so strenuously on now faded. The flat now flat, any enthusiasm, gone.
Vie had never taken any interest in these rooms other than for the use of the bed, what remained was treated with a certain amount of disdain. A pattern which was to repeat itself with other female faces.
Hardly know why, but in the middle of this aimlessness, decided to get myself a 'House-keeper' for want of a better word.
Stretched on my bed, looking at the wallpaper, the idea appealed to me for a variety of reasons. This person could clean up after me; straighten out the tangle of my surroundings. Perhaps visualising the type of person one sees portrayed on the films... efficient, practical, always at hand... helpful... 'Yes Sir' all day and 'No Sir' all night... then never very practical when it comes to decisions... only seeing things from my own perspective. My thoughts went so far as to imagine myself escaping from doing the rounds at the none too clean cafes... For a tenner a week, would have a 'wife' without the commitment, almost as good as having a woman that could be put in a cupboard ....only brought out when needed... one of my best ideas. Once mentioned this thought to a chisel faced feminist... She completely hit the deck head... I smiled.
Yes, a 'Housekeeper', the first decision I had made in a very long time.
By now Vie had taken some sort of part time job, no doubt disenchanted with myself, given up all thoughts of my keeping her, noticed that there were other men about, quite keen to do her 'Gardening' to wash her car, to generally be a dog's body. One in particular, determined to escape from his dingy room, prepared to do anything for Vie, prepared to rush into the situation. This person always glared at me as I watched him gardening away as if his very life depended on it... Suppose it did. Looked at Vie... she looked at me; we both knew precisely what each other was thinking. Maybe she thought the competition would sharpen my ideas up... an ancient female ploy... No, her price too high, demanded too much. For my part, simply a matter of standing back, watching the developments, watching with some amazement at the amount of effort this glaring man poured into that huge house. No end to his talents, new staircase, a complete self contained flat constructed within the house. Each time I made my languid visits something had been added.
Reluctantly, Vie started to give her thin body with the large breasts, the white skin to him... a change in her, the Vie I had always known, gone, she was subdued, thoughtful, cigarette constantly between her red painted lips. Maybe he was creating difficulties, maybe she could see no way out, other than to accept what he was offering, to give what he demanded.
Everyone has to pay.
So I had slide from another situation, without quarrels, without any unpleasantness, remaining friends with someone who had almost been a lover, someone I now felt free to discuss any subject, without constraints, without having to put in the odd small lie to justify myself in her eyes.
The business of the housekeeper finally came to a head, ....putting an advertisement in the London Weekly Advertiser, my feeling being that little would come of it, cooling off into nothing, like most of my ideas.
Possibly, looking at the photographs surrounding me now, it would be reasonable to say that my life restarted with my encounter with the ‘housekeeper’. Previous to this period, I had been totally immersed in my feelings for the past, for Australia, absorbed in what had happened there, what had been. Throughout the eight years I spent with Ruth, my life, a closed book. In her more exasperated moments she would almost shout ‘Speak... why don’t you ever speak’ after lapsing into one of my long troughs of silence.
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