A Judgement in Stone Read Free Page A

as long as she takes some of the load of work off your hands.”
    Before she made the phone call Jacqueline, who had an active imagination, had formed a picture in her mind of the kind of household in which Eunice Parchman worked and the kind of woman who employed her. Willow Vale, she thought, would be a quiet tree-lined road near Wimbledon Common, number 24 large, Victorian; Mrs. Chichester an elderly gentlewoman with rigid notions of behaviour, demanding but just, autocratic, whose servant was leaving her because she wouldn’t, or couldn’t afford to, pay her adequate wages in these inflationary times.
    At eight o’clock she dialled the number. Eunice Parchman answered the phone herself by giving the code correctly, followed by the four digits slowly and precisely enunciated. Again calling Jacqueline madam, she asked her to hold the line while she fetched Mrs. Chichester. And Jacqueline imagined her crossing a sombre overfurnished hall, entering a large and rather chilly drawing room where an old lady sat listening to classical music or reading the In Memoriam column in a quality newspaper. There, on the threshold, she would pause and say in her deferential way:
    “Mrs. Coverdale on the phone for you, madam.”
    The facts were otherwise.
    The telephone in question was attached to the wall on the first landing of a rooming house in Earlsfield, at the top of a flight of stairs. Eunice Parchman had been waiting patiently by it since five in case, when it rang, some other tenant should get to it first. Mrs. Chichester was a machine tool operator in her fifties calledAnnie Cole who sometimes performed small services of this kind in exchange for Eunice agreeing not to tell the Post Office how, for a year after her mother’s death, she had continued to draw that lady’s pension. Annie had written the letter and the words on the card, and it was from her furnished room, number 6, 24 Willow Vale, S.W. 18, that Eunice now fetched her to the phone. Annie Cole said:
    “I’m really very upset to be losing Miss Parchman, Mrs. Coverdale. She’s managed everything so wonderfully for me for seven years. She’s a marvellous worker, an excellent cook, and so house-proud! Really, if she has a fault, it’s that she’s too conscientious.”
    Even Jacqueline felt that this was laying it on a bit thick. And the voice was peculiarly sprightly—Annie Cole couldn’t get rid of Eunice fast enough—with an edge to it the reverse of refined. She had the sense to ask why this paragon was leaving.
    “Because I’m leaving myself.” The reply came without hesitation. “I’m joining my son in New Zealand. The cost of living is getting impossible here, isn’t it? Miss Parchman could come with me, I should welcome the idea, but she’s rather conservative. She prefers to stay here. I should like to think of her settling in a nice family like yours.”
    Jacqueline was satisfied.
    “Did you confirm it with Miss Parchman?” asked George.
    “Oh, darling, I forgot. I’ll have to write to her.”
    “Or phone back.”
    Why not phone back, Jacqueline? Dial that number again now. A young man returning to his room next to Annie Cole’s, setting his foot now on the last step of that flight of stairs, will lift the receiver. And when you ask for Miss Parchman he will tell you he has never heard of her. Mrs. Chichester, then? There is no Mrs. Chichester, only a Mr. Chichester who is the landlord, in whose name the phone number is but who himself lives in Croydon. Pick up the phone now, Jacqueline …
    “I think it’s better to confirm it in writing.”
    “Just as you like, darling.”
    The moment passed, the chance was lost. George did pick upthe phone, but it was to call Paula, for the report on her health he had received from his wife had disquieted him. While he was talking to her, Jacqueline wrote her letter.
    And the other people whom chance and destiny and their own agency were to bring together for destruction on February 14? Joan