QUILPS GOES HOME

Home was never like this before...

When Indigo Quilps arrived home, his lovely wife was waiting for him with a less than joyous expression on her face. But it wasn’t her face that scared him so much as the way her arms were quite severely folded in front of her as if they represented an impermeable barrier. And he’d had quite a delightful conclusion to the day at The Stork’s Nest where he’d bought a few drinks for the lady in opposition to his own ill-considered political views because he’d had a glimpse of her underwear and quite fancied a second peek, which he didn’t get.

“And what time do you call this?” Marie Quilps demanded, and there was rusty iron in her voice. And when he glanced at her eyes he was quite convinced there were razor blades glinting deep inside them.

He was, he knew it, in trouble, though he was hard pushed to work out why.

“I’ve been at the hustings,” he told her.

“Hustings be blowed! I’ve had a woman round here and she split a whole lot of beans!” she grated, “A lovely woman who used to be in charge of our home when we were unwanted kids, and she told me all about you!”

“Oh,” he said, “then you must blame the papers. I said one thing and they reported another.”

“Poor Mollie Daybright,” she said, and he thought he saw a tear forcing its way out of her left eye.

“All I said was being an orphan and left alone in the world was a kind of abuse,” he mumbled, and the more often he repeated the true explanation the less believable it seemed, even to him.

“And she’s been made out of work. And homeless. And penniless,” continued Marie, “don’t you feel sad about it? Don’t you regret using the word abuse? Saying that your childhood was bound up with all manner of abuse?”

“I never said that,” he responded weakly.

“Anyway, I told her we can put things right for her. I told her I was about to throw our lodger out onto the streets because he can no longer afford to live here and that she can have his room for as long as she wants, and for free. She’ll like it. The bed’s lovely and the view from its window is divine. You can see right into the Spencers’ bedroom when they’re up to their games.”

“What games?” he asked, lost for anything better to ask.

“You must know. The sort we used to enjoy before Olive came along.”

“Oh. How is the child?” he asked, wondering why he’d forgotten about having a daughter.

“I gave her away,” smiled Marie, “she was threatening to get in the way when my friend was at his most interesting, and Mrs Palmer says she’s a delightful little creature, so I gave the child to her. I was getting browned off with filthy nappies anyway.”

“You gave our daughter away?” asked Quilps, horrified, though he couldn’t really ot his finger on why the idea upset him as much as it did.

“It’s all right. You’re paying for her upkeep, so all’s well. I’ve come to an arrangement with Mrs Palmer, who’s a lovely woman with a matronly bosom.”

“Matronly bosom?” gasped Quilps.

“And Olive’s really happy there. You can see her any time you’re in France, which is where they live.

“France…?”

“And my friend’s vacated the spare bedroom, as I said. He was broke poor man, and I thought a couple of hundred a night was reasonable, until he became skint nd I reduced it to fifty, without special services…”

“Special services?”

“You know. Sometimes the poor man couldn’t get off to sleep, so I helped him, and it was fun. You remember fun don’t you, Indigo my dearest? You know, before you took to being out on the town half the night? Anyway, he went when he was down to his last few pence and Matron, I mean Mollie, is in the spare room now. She moved in straight away, and there’s no charge after the lousy things you said about her.”

“I never did!”

“Maybe you should slip your brain into gear before you open your mouth, dear. Anyway, I said you’d put your head round the door and apologise to her when you came in. I’m going out soon…”

“But the time! It’s midnight!”

“I know! I’m on the night shift at the dairy. All the milkmen have to prepare for the day’s work in advance, and I don’t charge much to help them, on an individual basis. And it is fun!”

“Help them?”

“You know what men need at that hour? Well, I provide it seeing as my own husband’s rarely around for me to you-know-what…”

“I know what?”

“You ought to, dearest. Now get up the stairs, apologise to Mrs Daybright, or you can call her Mollie if you like, she doesn’t mind familiarity. I’ve got a couple of interesting hours in front of me.”

“You have?”

“Now get along with you!” Marie laughed out loud as if they’d just shared an enormously funny joke, slipped into something corsetty because she said it was more comfortable than the cotton dress she usually wore, and giggled her way out through the front door.

By that time the drinks he’d shared with Eva Curry were slowly wearing off, withdrawing into a dull throb somewhere in the depths of his skull, and he needed to replenish them. The trouble was, in recent weeks he’d spent so little time at home he’d forgotten where, if anywhere, he kept bottles of alcohol, and he ended up almost gliding up the stairs, looking in every corner and even under a loose section of stair carpet, but to no avail.

But he did find the spare bedroom and the fact that Marie had told him she’d offered it to Matron Daybright completely slipped his mind as he turned the handle and poked his nose blindly into the top layer of a chest of drawers, whispering whiskey, whiskey, where are you?”

He was brought to a sudden standstill by an almost harsh voice.

“Now then, Quilpsy, what are you doing? Do you want to help me shaving?

In horror, or what he thought ought to be horror, he looked up.

Sitting on a stool and with a cut-throat razor in one hand whilst stirring a mass of white foam into her nether regions, and naked as they day she’d been born, was Matron Mollie Daybright, and the expression on her face was one he’d never seen on it before.

“After all, you did say you love me, remember?” added the woman, and she dragged the sharpest of blades through the mass of foam.

He remembered. He had, and he’d meant it at the time because, to him, she was the mother he never had and he felt warm, almost loving, towards her.

“Come over here, take that tall hat off, you cheeky boy, and help me, Quilpsy,” she went on, “this might be wonderful fun, and if you’re a good boy I’ll tell you the sort of story Mr Dickens never wrote down.!”

© Peter Rogerson 28.07.22

...