Doctor Who_ Bad Therapy - Matthew Jones [109]
‘Goddess, Mrs Benham, I forgot it was your day today,’ Patsy exclaimed, and then glanced at Chris, a private, impish grin crossing her face as she ushered him out of the room.
Mrs Benham didn’t miss the look. ‘Oh I see how it is.’ Her panic vanished to be quickly replaced by outrage. ‘I’ll bet you forgot that it was my day for cleaning today! Didn’t want someone to come and disturb you in your bed of sin. What would your husband think? You little trollop. You’re dancing on Mr Burgess’s grave.’
Chris had intended to slip back upstairs, but he found himself loitering in the passage, eavesdropping on the heated argument in the kitchen. He was shocked by the old woman’s reaction. He knew both from history and from his own experience of time travel that people were still incredibly sexually repressed in the Western nations in the mid-twentieth century. He could understand the cleaning woman being shocked and distressed on suddenly encountering a naked man – nudity being such a taboo in this period. It was her bitter anger that didn’t make sense to him. Why was she so angry for Patsy to have a sexual relationship with another man? It wasn’t as if Patsy’s husband was still alive and Patsy was having a secret affair. He’d been dead for five years.
189
He could hear Patsy’s voice clearly from the kitchen.
‘What I do in my own house is no business of yours, Mrs Benham.’
‘ Your house, is it? I’ve cleaned this house for seventeen years. Seventeen years I looked after Mr Burgess. Washed his clothes and ironed his shirts. I knew you were no good for him from the first moment I clapped eyes on you.
Just after his money. For what he could do for you. And I was right. Made you a big star he did, and this is how you go and repay him. The poor man hasn’t even been dead a –’
‘That’s enough!’ Patsy interrupted, angrily. ‘That’s quite enough out of you.’
‘Oh, no it’s not nearly enough. It’s time you heard a few home truths, my girl. You’re nothing more than a common slut.’
Chris leant against the wall of the hallway, debating whether he ought to return to the kitchen and offer Patsy some support. However, he suspected that in his present state of undress he’d only be pouring petrol on the already flaming row. He was about to make his way back upstairs just as he heard Patsy give the cleaning lady her marching orders.
Before he could sneak away, Mrs Benham bustled out of the kitchen and, too angry this time to be upset by his nudity, fixed him with a venomous stare.
‘I don’t know how you can bear to touch that. . . slut. The earth’s barely settled on his coffin.’
Barely settled? Chris frowned. ‘What do you mean? Whose coffin?’
Patsy hurried out of the kitchen just as Mrs Benham shrieked, ‘You mean you don’t know? A week her husband’s been dead. A week! And now she’s shacked up with you. The devil’s more shame than that cow.’ She caught sight of Patsy staring at her. ‘I’ll not step foot in this house again.’
Patsy marched past her and opened the door violently. ‘Seeing as I’ve just given you the sack you won’t ever have reason to, will you? Now get out.’
‘Oh I’m leaving,’ the old woman snapped, and marched out of the house.
Patsy slammed the door after her and then leant upon it. ‘I should have done that a long time ago. Mean old witch.’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘Do you know a good cleaner? It seems that I’m suddenly in the market for one.’
Chris stared at her, trying to make sense of what had just happened. ‘She said –’ he started, his mind racing. ‘She just said –’
‘Don’t pay any attention to her.’
With deepest sympathy on your recent loss, the card attached to the wreath had read. It was all falling into place: the wreath with the funereal message; all the flowers in the sitting room; the cleaning lady’s outrage. Robert Burgess hadn’t been dead for the last five years, he’d died a week ago.
Goddess, what kind of person was Patsy to be capable of this? And even as he asked himself the question, another voice in his head was asking him how he’d been able to become