The Little Lady

I think I deserved a little whisky and water to help me through the interviews. We’d agency doing the cleaning, but I’d told my wife it would be cheaper and more efficient hiring our own worker. In my head, I’d ask them searching questions and examine CVs. But the three applicants grilled me about terms and conditions and holidays. I’d have preferred to hire the youngest one, but my wife wouldn’t have liked that, even though she wasn’t pretty.

Miss MacKay said she’d take the job, or at least give it a trial run. She’d a dirty laugh. I’d mentioned that ‘Scotland had a lot of sects.’

Whether on purpose or not, she thought I’d said, ‘Sex,’ and we got on famously afterwards.

I might have been slightly drunk at that point. I told her my notion of sex was extremely limited, limited to boning up on the basics. My longstanding wife completely understood. Or I thought she did. I never thought to ask. We weren’t that type of modern couple that discussed such things.

I saw Miss McKay’s age from her CV, which wasn’t a CV, but a scribbled note I’d made and circled, 34. The same age as us. She was an unattractive woman. Let me state that now. But clean looking, which was ideal for a cleaner. You could have ate your dinner off whatever you ate your dinner off.

We weren’t the kind of couple that were prejudiced. Presbyterian in our beliefs that Scotland and England should not be joined. Our school motto reflected this belief:

‘My safety cometh from the Lord,

who heaven on earth hath made.’

Our school was surrounded by iron railings to keep out the English. We owed the English nothing, but forgot nothing.

Miss McKay said in her English accent, she hailed from Dumfries. The home of Burns and dubious assertions. A welcome enough lie to lighten a dull morning.

I hated to use that word, ‘mannish’. Neither short nor tall. Her face unremarkable. But she had an uncanny habit of looking you straight in the eye when you addressed her as I found out to my cost.

I was baking something in the kitchen, or as she put it, ‘Making an unwholesome mess.’

‘Have you any children?’ I asked her.

‘Have you?’ she replied. Knowing well we hadn’t been blessed in that way.

I waved a baking tray at her, stumbled a bit and steadied myself, gripping the work surface. ‘We’re trying.’  

‘Very,’ she said loading the dishwasher. With her back to me, it allowed her to speak more freely. She’d a partner around twenty-years older. And she’d a couple of kids. One of them was a bit of a handful and the other was a teenager that refused to pick up after herself and refused to get a job.

I murmured the usual platitudes about ‘the more the merrier.’ And excused myself by having to walk the dog and prepare dinner.

‘I’m finished here,’ Miss McKay said later, wiping down the work surface. She officially finished at 2pm. Sometimes a little earlier. She accused me of being one of them ‘clock-watchers’. In her English accent, she made it seem like one of the more arcane Scottish cults positioned next to paedophiles and priests.

Usually I’d a glass of wine before dinner. My wife’s office often kept her late. By the time she arrived, the bottle would be empty and the dinner in the dog. It was the oldest of Scottish clichés.

For a time, she didn’t seem to mind. She joined me in a glass and she’d ask about my day. She had a fascination with the doings and sayings of Miss McKay. I didn’t find them that interesting. She had tried being a white witch, but we all liked dressing up when we were kids. She’d done that swinging thing on Grinder or Tinder or whatever these things were called, but she was too old for it. Although we got the never say never and keep yourself open to new experience faff.

‘I’d kill you stone dead,’ my wife said, if I caught you on one of those sites.

‘I’d kill myself stone dead too,’ I replied. Pouring myself another glass of wine before bed. ‘Not that a stone can be dead.’

But she was just getting a little dig in at me. I’d a fling with her best friend, Moira. But that was before we were married. That wasn’t supposed to count. Men sowed their oats and Moira just got in the way. It was nothing personal.

‘If only I know then, what I know now,’ my wife said before flouncing off to bed.

I didn’t blame her. We all wanted to know now what we knew then. Having another glass of wine helped me find what I wasn’t looking for. Avoid tantrums about her friend Moira having a bigger house and two daughters that were ‘simply heavenly’.

When she got to the stage when she was matching me drink for drink and howling, ‘No man ever let me down,’ I knew it was time to get her into bed, pronto. She’d work in the morning.

But since Miss McKay started that hadn’t happened. I was often left alone, scanning the internet for something worth watching. I didn’t mention to my wife that her friend, her best friend, kept messaging me. ‘You must be gay,’ she wrote in one message because I’d turned her down again. Her melodramatic accusations were giving me heartburn.   

I mentioned it to Miss McKay. In her yellow marigolds she indulged me, too much water sloping about as she pushed a dirty mop about with fleshy arms.

‘I don’t think your gay, no.’

She was going to tell me what she really thought, but I held up a finger, which suggested some kind of detente with a stop off for drinks.

Miss McKay didn’t drink, of course, being English and not a football hooligan. I had to drink her drink for her, which she sampled mint tea, or witch’s brew, whatever was easier on the tongue.

I thought I’d seen the last of Moira. I’d blocked her or barred her or done whatever you had to do without smashing the computer off the wall. I thought of telling her husband. But the frightening thought was he already knew. Moira had always been a bit wild.

She met her match in Miss MacKay. When she tried to barge through the door, Miss McKay stood in her way while I skulked behind her.

‘How dare you,’ Moira cried.

Miss MacKay did more than dare. She slapped Moira hard on the cheeks twice. The first slap left her shocked. The second cowed her. She fell apart and wasn’t a pretty sight. ‘I’ll call the police,’ she said.

‘Go ahead,’ said Miss MacKay, picking up her bag and rifling through it before her handing her phone. ‘The police around here would love to know what you’re up to. They love, love, love, stories of sexual predators, especially when it’s women. Something they can sell to the tabloids on the fly. Especially when it’s a little blonde tart like you. You might even make Page 3.’

‘Charlie,’ she shouted in a strangulated voice over her shoulder. ‘Don’t let her tell my husband.’

I kept it civil. ‘I won’t.’

Moira clutched her arms around her midriff, shaking. I must admit, I looked at her tits. Moira always had nice tits.

‘Will you ever grow up?’ Moira cried over her shoulder as Miss MacKay pushed her towards the door. ‘Maddie’s sold the house and everything in it must go—including you.’

I tried not to greet in front of her.

Miss MacKay brought me a large whiskey. My hands shook as I put it to my lips. She steadied the glass and I gulped it down.

‘What will I say to her?’ I asked.

‘Say what you think’s right.’

‘About what?’ I staggered away from her. ‘I need to lie down.’

But what I really needed was another whiskey. Miss MacKay was ahead of me and pouring me one from the decanter. A grim look on her face.

I swallowed a large mouthful. ‘Cheer up. It may never happen.’

‘Don’t carry on like that.’ She glanced at the floor where my heel was making scuff marks as I swung a leg back and forth. ‘It’s too much for her. She comes home dog-tired and your drunk.’

I was going to protest, but she’d already refilled my drink. I took a tentative sip and then downed it, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. ‘She makes good money…She said so herself.’

My quietness defeated her. I rubbed the empty glass round and round in my hand. ‘Suppose she’s got somebody else lined up. Nice new husband. Nice new life.’

‘Yes,’ hissed Miss MacKay. ‘New life. New wife.’

We looked at each other and the glass dropped from my hand. ‘Fuck you,’ I said.

She laughed. ‘She already has.’