The Rules

Day 2 cont.

I became worried. Had I overstepped the mark? She had insisted on honesty and humiliated me. She had to be told. That was to be the deal or so I thought, but my dad had warned me that this job would come to no good. ‘They are all a cup short of a tea-set, when it comes to snobbish protocol,’ he had informed me over supper last night. I dried my eyes on my blouse sleeve, and managed a conciliatory tone, mainly because she was white as a sheet and I feared a coronary was on its way. 

'What is it?' I asked. 'Are you ill?'

'No. Just shocked at myself.' 

Her reply was barely audible. I sat beside her and took her hand.

'I’m sorry I shouted. I didn’t want to. Please explain.'

'Can’t.'

'I promised honesty. Now you have to reciprocate. Sultan – remember?'

'I remember. And you are right. But please withdraw your Sultan. It’s too embarrassing. Leave me time.' 

'You never said anything about being allowed to withdraw a Sultan. Too late to change the rules. Tell me! What on earth has turned you white as a sheet with icy trembling hands?'

There was an embarrassingly long pause, but I knew I had to face her out. For her arrangement to work, we had to be friends and that can only be based on a fine line of honesty. Finally, she started to explain.

'Millicent. You mustn’t walk out on me if I tell you. We will be proper friends, now we have the Sultan agreement.'

'Yeh, sure - whatever.' I decided to defer tackling the Millicent business until another day. She must have noticed that my real friends call me Millie. I felt she was trying to provoke me, so I wasn’t provoked. Never do what the enemy wants, even if they do claim friendship. They are the worst sort. If she called Sid ‘Sidonie’ one more time she may get to wear her fried egg, waitress job or no waitress job. Sid is more a hands-on person than me. 

Finally, Vera drew breath and continued.

'You see, it was, and to a certain extent still is, inconceivable to have a girl from the village share my car with me. So, it never crossed my mind. But you are right! We will go out together in the car.'

I laughed, and used my hankie to wipe the tears from her and my cheek.

'I can’t imagine you sitting in our old banger either Vera, especially after the dog became travel-sick last weekend. I used a whole carton of Febreez and it still stinks.'

'So, you are not angry at my blatant snobbishness?'

'Na,' I drawled. 'That would assume I wanted to sit in your woofty motor in the first place. Like I said, I’d rather walk.'

'I see. That’s put me in my place.'

I took a moment to consider what she really wanted. Was I here to teach her a few realities that had passed her by because she had been born with such an enormous silver spoon lodged in her mouth? I thought so. Why else? I went for the kill.

'Vera, you are very privileged and I believe you know it. You have many things, too many to count, I’m sure, that I will never own. That doesn’t mean that I want what you have. If I had your money I would invest it in a village in Africa and help make their life sustainable. I wouldn’t buy a bloody Beamer no one is allowed to sit in.'

There. I had said it. Would she sack me or tell me to go dig the garden while she composed her injured dignity?

'I see. I really do see. You are proud of where you come from and don’t actually envy me. You are right, of course. My tribe are all in danger of suffocating on too much cake. It doesn’t make them happy. On the contrary, most need therapy.'

'There are a few people down Church Cottages need therapy, too, just they can’t afford it. And I think I now understand why I am here. Quick on the uptake, aren’t I? I am to teach you to live without cake.'

'Nearly right, Millicent. I don’t need to live without cake and my tribe wouldn’t let me, even if I wanted to. I want to be able to think of other things, not just about how much cake I have. If you can reveal that alternative viewpoint, I’ll be able to experience a whole new world, maybe your world or perhaps my own world, but differently.'

I stopped to think on what she had said. Did I really understand her? There was an enormous gulf between us, made up of age difference, money and of course, social class. How could I deliver her from a surfeit of cake?

'I need a cup of tea, Vera. Here or the café?'

'Here I think. I’ll ring for some.'

'No! We’ll go make it ourselves.'

'Can’t. Our kitchens aren’t like that.'

'You can’t make tea for yourself?'

'Why would I want to?'

'Vera! It’s almost a perfect dialectic.'

'It is? Explain!'

'You have complete power over your servants and yet are powerless to make your own tea. Thesis - antithesis'

'And what pray, should the synthesis be?

'Build your own tea kitchen!'

'That’s only going to be needed if the servants go on strike.'

'Empowerment, Vera. Take control. You need to be able to make tea if you want to. Where can I find a kettle and some cups?'

'There’s nothing up here.'

'There’s nothing up here,' I echoed. I was staggered. 'Let’s go look through your apartment and see where we can build in your very own tea kitchen. First act of emancipation. But first I’m going to write our rules down.'

I took a notepad from the window-ledge and spoke as I wrote:

1. Sultan rule. Call ‘Sultan’ if one of us is about to hide the truth from the other.
2. Emancipation rule. Call ‘Brave New World,’ Every time we create a bit more freedom and self-empowerment.

Vera interrupted. 'Let’s shorten ‘Brave New World’ – bit of a mouthful I think. Just shout Huxley.' She was grinning from ear to ear. 'But of course, we are not striving for Huxley’s BNW. We want the reverse of his hell.'

I stopped and considered her point. She was someone who liked games with accurate rules. That’ll be the boarding school. I made a note to myself - must get her talking about her schooldays.

'It’s OK to use Brave New World,' I expostulated. 'It will remind us of Huxley’s desire or ambition, to have capitalism serve society instead of society being the handmaiden of capitalism, which is what we have at the moment. What you should strive for, Vera, is to let your wealth and privilege create beauty in your life. At the moment I get the impression that you are a slave to it.'

Vera bristled. She was not happy at this analysis.

'Slave to it? How do you come to that conclusion?'

'You have a problem with me walking to the house if I use the main entrance, because your snooty chums would find it odd. No one minds if I walk up the back path and use the tradesmen’s entrance, except, I can’t then be your friend. What a pickle? Why give a shit what your snooty chums think? If they are really your chums, they will get over it. If they don’t get over it, then it is their problem.'

'Yes, Yes. I get the picture. Stop there or we’ll be back to the Land Rover scenario. And I was intimate friends with a servant once and that really backfired.'

She paused, but didn’t take her eyes from me. She continued without explaining what went down between her and the butler.

'Huxley is the rule we shout if I become a slave to my title. Is that what you want? What do we get if we reverse ‘Huxley’'? 

I scribbled.

'Not good, yelxuh! Unpronounceable! But if we take the x out and swap it or move it?'

'Swop the x and h. We must get ‘yelhux’. Excellent!' 

'Excellent indeed,' I shouted. How did she do that one in her head? 'Now, charming builders’ tea at the café and then we’ll design a tea parlour with kettle etc. Right here, in the house.'

'But before we do that, I think we need another rule.'

I took up my pencil and waited in anticipation.

'Rule 3,' she continued, 'the dialectic. Of course, I’m a slave to convention. We all are, even the tramp looking for a hedge to sleep under. He, too, has to consider the feelings of his homeless brothers in case he usurps their spot. More importantly - another dialectic - the very act of rejecting convention, which is what you tell me I should do, makes you a slave to it.'

She finished with a self-satisfied smirk. I was dumbfounded. When I had recovered, I asked the inevitable question.

'Where did you learn about Kant, Marx, Hegel and the dialectic? It wasn’t at girls’ boarding school, I’ll be bound.'

She rose from the sofa, took a beautiful woollen cape against the wind and marched purposefully toward the café, using the more direct tradesman’s entrance, and ignored my question. She called back in a leisurely way, 'Rule 3. Write it down. Dialectic rule. Shout ‘Karl’ if one of us uses an argument that has an antithesis or actually proves the opposite.'

I wanted to remind her that according to the ancient Greeks, all arguments and debates have a thesis and antithesis, but she was already celebrating her victory. Smug, doesn’t begin to describe her expression, but she had earned it. 

I was determined to have the last word on the matter and called after her, 'Rule 4 Vera. Consequences. Or maybe it should be game, set and match. This is the rule we apply, when the solution to the contradiction is to guillotine the aristocracy and all their capitalist lackeys.'

She turned in the doorway and laughed.

'Well done, Millicent. I’ll give you a fifty-quid bonus if you ever manage to use it. Don’t forget you have become a lackey. Could be painful.'