Half life

Showing off the Dobermann

Carole Morin

Dangerous Donald gave up guilt for Lent. When I asked for a servant instead of an Easter egg, he couldn't refuse without breaking his promise to God (by feeling guilty about the expense).

Betty, our newish maid, is supposed to appear on Fridays when I'm at Mass, but she has the nerve to show up whenever it suits her cash flow. These increasingly expensive visits occur in the morning when I'm too tired to argue. Today she pounded on the door as if she was being raped; barged in shouting, 'I love my work'; then ran her false nail across the film of invisible dust on the kitchen floor saying, 'This'll cost you.' I smiled without replying, won- dering when Gorm, my godmother, would return from her tourist trip to Harrods.

Now that Lent is long gone for another year, Dangerous Donald is allowed to feel reluctant to tell an aged, working-class, hunchbacked cleaner with a shaggy sheep- dog barnet and a sodden husband to com- plain about that she'll have to accept a salary cut or be replaced with an illegal immigrant. But Gorm doesn't have a guilty bone in her body. She was my grandfather's germ-obsessed girlfriend when he was alive, and knows the going rate for scouring a toilet or de-toxing an oven. Insanely jeal- ous of Betty, she's been dying to fly down from Glasgow to inspect her rival's scrub- bing skills ever since I let it slip that bouncy Betty was working here.

`Incidentally,' Betty said, cutting an enor- mous slice of cake to go with the mug of ginseng tea she helped herself to, 'that brown man downstairs showed me his willie.' One of her lurid yellow hairs had moulted onto my sparkly kitchen counter. I couldn't take my eyes off it. Dirty hair drives Gorm mad especially when it's not attached to itisscalp. 'I walked into his bed- room to change the sheets and the lazy galoot was lying in bed exposing his willie.'

'Maybe he wasn't expecting you?' The shift-working foreign doctor downstairs has tried to fire Betty, but she has his key. When he said, 'I don't think I need you,' Betty replied, 'Don't be ridiculous.'

`Can you believe it?' Betty asked. Soggy bits of cake lodged in the gaps between her long teeth. I couldn't bring myself to enquire if people really use the word 'willie' these days. Of course, Betty has just used it — though perhaps for my benefit? In her spare time, she probably calls a penis a plonker. As far as I know, that's the tabloid word for it. I could ask The Sun, but they might think I was making a nuisance call.

`It's unnatural,' Betty said, 'a doctor of that age and he never has a dirty dish in the house.' She ordered me to go back to bed and wait for my breakfast. I lay in my Tallulah Bankhead pyjamas, dreading the disgusting toast and puddly coffee. Gorm had already force-fed me before going out.

`Your post,' Betty said, thumping in with the tray. An orange leaflet from the Medi- cal Research Council asked: 'Would you be prepared to swallow a very small tube?'

We discussed the disadvantages of sub- mitting to a medical experiment for money. I didn't think they were offering enough; Betty believes it's evil to do a job unless your heart's in it.

`I'll run your bath,' she said, 'but first I'll have to scrub it — and that'll cost you.' When she's not around I'm allowed to take a shower.

`See who's at the door,' I said innocently.

Gorm made her entrance bellowing, `Someone in this room stinks of gin and it isn't me.' I locked myself in the bathroom leaving them to get on with it crone-to- crone.

When I emerged, clean and serene, the new humble Betty was on her knees polish- ing the tiles. 'I love working here,' she gushed. 'I'd work for nothing if I could afford it. You know,' she confided in Gorm, ter husband has never shown me his willie in his life.'

`You're the last person he'd show his Dobermann to.' Gorm said, outraged. 'My God! I didn't know you had a Dobermann.' Betty said to me 'She doesn't,' Gorm said, giving Betty the sort of look she usually saves for soiled toilet brushes. For reasons of her own, Gorm has always called a penis a Dobermann.

Betty didn't look too happy when she left. 'I can put up with your godmother,' she said, 'but a dog's a different matter.'