The Third Cup

When the museum bought our house, they asked my mother whether she would mind having strangers walk through it.

She said she didn't, provided they wiped their feet.

That was in 1984. My mother had been dead for eleven years, so the question was put to me instead, and I answered as I thought she would have.

I was wrong about a great many things concerning my mother. I have had forty years to establish this.

The house stood at the end of Bell Street, where the old railway bridge crossed the canal. There had been twelve houses in the terrace, all identical, with narrow back gardens and outside lavatories. Ours was the last to be demolished. The council had wanted the land for a road, but someone from the local historical society persuaded them to preserve Number Twelve as an example of working-class domestic life.

They dismantled the house brick by brick, numbered everything, and rebuilt it in the grounds of the municipal museum.

My brother Peter said it was the first time anyone had considered our home worth keeping.

I said they hadn't considered it worth keeping when we lived there.

He laughed. Peter laughed at most things I said, particularly when I wasn't trying to be funny.

The museum opened the following spring. They furnished the rooms with objects from the period, some donated by local families, others purchased at auction. Our kitchen table was there, as were my mother's dresser and the little iron bed in which Peter and I had slept.

They asked me to identify things in old photographs.

I did what I could.

Then I left the town, married, had three children, and gave very little thought to Number Twelve until my husband died and I returned.

By then I was sixty-seven.

The museum had changed its name twice. The railway bridge had been replaced. Bell Street was a car park belonging to a supermarket.

Our house remained.

I went one Thursday because it was raining, and the museum was somewhere to spend the afternoon.

A young man at the entrance asked whether I qualified for the senior discount.

I said I did.

He gave me a ticket and a leaflet.

On the cover was a photograph of our kitchen.

A WORKING FAMILY'S HOME, 1952.

I stood looking at it for so long that the young man asked if something was wrong.

"No," I said. "Only the table is facing the wrong way."

They had put a third cup on the kitchen table.

That was the first thing I noticed.

The second was the apron hanging from a hook beside the stove.

It was a blue cotton apron with yellow flowers, quite unlike anything my mother had owned. She wore plain brown aprons that she made herself from old dresses. She considered patterned fabric a waste of good material.

I went into the kitchen.

A sign on the table said PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH THE EXHIBITS.

The cups were white, with green rims. There were three of them, arranged around a loaf of imitation bread.

I lifted one.

"Madam?"

A woman in a museum uniform had appeared at the door.

"You're not supposed to touch anything."

"I'm sorry," I said.

I put the cup down.

She was younger than my eldest daughter, with a round, pleasant face and a badge that said KAREN.

"Is there something I can help you with?"

"Who put that there?"

"The cup?"

"Yes."

She looked at the table.

"I'm not sure. The exhibition team, probably."

"There should be four."

She smiled politely.

"Well, I expect they were trying to show what a typical family meal might have looked like."

"There were four of us."

"Of course."

"My mother. My brother. Me. And Miss Hart."

Karen waited.

"Miss Hart lived here."

"Was she a relative?"

"No."

"Ah."

She said it as if this settled something.

"Well, perhaps that's why they only put three."

I looked at her.

"That would explain four," I said. "Not three."

She laughed, embarrassed.

I thanked her and left.

Miss Hart arrived at our house in October 1951, carrying a brown suitcase and a parcel wrapped in newspaper.

She was thirty-eight years old and wore her hair in a knot at the back of her head.

My mother told us she would be staying for a little while.

"How long?" Peter asked.

"Until she goes," my mother said.

This was the sort of answer she gave to questions she considered impertinent.

Miss Hart took the small upstairs room that had belonged to our father before he disappeared.

I was six then, and believed people could disappear quite naturally, the way cats did.

Our father had gone in February. He left his good coat behind, which my mother considered proof that he intended to return.

By Christmas she had sold the coat.

Miss Hart worked at the railway office. She went out each morning in a dark skirt and a green coat, carrying a leather handbag with a broken clasp.

Every Friday she brought home her wages in a brown envelope.

She gave my mother most of the money and kept enough for cigarettes, stockings, and an occasional visit to the cinema.

She smoked in the back garden.

My mother disliked smoking.

"Filthy habit," she would say through the kitchen window.

Miss Hart would lift her cigarette in acknowledgment.

They seldom quarrelled.

When they did, they were extraordinarily quiet about it.

Peter and I learned to recognise the signs: the cupboard doors closed more carefully than usual, the absence of conversation at supper, Miss Hart going upstairs without taking her tea.

Once, after an argument I had not witnessed, I found my mother sitting at the kitchen table with the household accounts spread before her.

She was crying.

It frightened me because she made no sound.

I asked what was wrong.

She said Miss Hart had been offered a position in Birmingham.

"Is she going?"

"I don't know."

"Can we go too?"

My mother folded the accounts.

"No."

"Why?"

"Because this is our home."

Miss Hart stayed.

The following summer she bought us a radio.

I returned to the museum the next week and asked to speak to whoever was responsible for the house.

They directed me to a man named Daniel Price, the curator of social history.

He was about forty, with thinning hair and a careful manner. His office contained piles of books, a dying plant, and several cardboard boxes marked DONATIONS.

He offered me tea.

I said no.

Then I told him who I was.

His expression changed immediately.

"Good heavens. You're one of the children."

"I was."

"How wonderful."

He shook my hand.

He wanted to know everything about the house. What we ate, how we washed our clothes, where we kept coal, whether we had electricity in every room.

I answered his questions.

When he had finished taking notes, I mentioned Miss Hart.

He searched through a file.

"Yes," he said. "Margaret Hart. We've got her here."

He showed me a photocopy of the 1952 electoral register.

There were three names listed at Number Twelve: Rose Bennett, Margaret Hart, and a man called Frederick Ellis.

"Who's Frederick Ellis?" he asked.

"The previous tenant. He died before we moved in."

"Ah. That's useful."

He made a note.

"And Miss Hart?" I asked.

"Yes. We've identified her as a lodger."

"She wasn't a lodger."

He looked up.

"No?"

"She lived with us."

"Of course. But was there a family connection?"

I thought about it.

"No."

"Then lodger would be the appropriate historical term."

"She didn't pay rent."

"Did she contribute to the household?"

"Yes."

He nodded.

"Then that would support it."

I disliked him suddenly, though he had done nothing particularly objectionable.

"She lived with us for twenty-two years."

He looked impressed.

"That's a long time."

"She was there when my mother died."

"I'm sorry."

"She arranged the funeral."

He set down his pen.

"Mrs Bennett, what would you like us to say about Miss Hart?"

The question seemed so simple that I could not answer it.

My mother died on a Wednesday morning in August.

She had complained of a headache the previous evening. Miss Hart gave her two tablets and made her lie down.

At six the next morning, Miss Hart went into her room and found her dead.

Peter was married by then and living in Leeds. I was twenty-eight and had a flat above a butcher's shop.

Miss Hart telephoned us both.

She had already called the doctor.

When I arrived, she was in the kitchen washing cups.

I remember being angry with her for washing cups.

My mother was upstairs, dead, and Miss Hart was standing at the sink with her sleeves rolled up.

"Where is she?"

"In bed."

"Why haven't you called someone?"

"I have."

"Then what are you doing?"

She placed a cup carefully on the draining board.

"Something useful."

I went upstairs.

My mother looked very small beneath the bedclothes.

Someone had combed her hair.

I understood later that it must have been Miss Hart.

For the next week she dealt with everything.

She chose the coffin, telephoned relatives, arranged the flowers, and found my mother's insurance papers in the dresser.

She knew where everything was.

I hated this.

I had come prepared to be the eldest daughter, the responsible one, the person to whom everyone would turn.

Instead I stood uselessly in the kitchen while Miss Hart told the undertaker which church my mother preferred.

At the funeral, several people assumed she was my mother's sister.

Neither of us corrected them.

Afterwards Peter asked her what she intended to do.

"About what?"

"The house."

"I expect I'll stay here."

He said the tenancy would have to be transferred.

She said she would speak to the council.

He suggested she might prefer something smaller.

She looked at him for a long moment.

"Your mother didn't."

It was the closest I ever saw Miss Hart come to telling someone to get out.

Daniel telephoned a few days after our meeting.

He had been looking through the museum's collection, he said, and had found a photograph of Miss Hart.

Would I come and identify her?

I went on Monday.

The photograph showed seven women standing outside the railway office in 1957.

Miss Hart was at the far right, holding a handbag.

She looked younger than I remembered.

"That's her."

Daniel passed me a magnifying glass.

"Can you identify anyone else?"

"No."

He showed me another photograph.

It was our garden.

My mother stood beside the washing line, holding a basket of clothes. Miss Hart was sitting on the back step.

I had never seen the picture before.

"Where did you get this?"

"It came with the original donation."

"From whom?"

He checked the file.

"You, apparently."

I stared at the photograph.

I must have given them the whole box when the house was dismantled. I remembered being asked for family photographs, but not what I had chosen.

In the picture, my mother was looking down at Miss Hart.

Miss Hart was laughing.

I could not remember ever seeing them like that.

Not together. Not in that way.

"Would you like a copy?" Daniel asked.

"Yes."

He promised to have one made.

Then he said they were preparing new interpretation panels for the house.

"We're trying to make the domestic history a little more personal. Less about objects, more about the people who lived there."

He showed me a draft.

ROSE BENNETT (1909–1973)

Rose raised her two children alone after her husband's departure. Like many working-class women of the period, she supplemented her income by taking in a lodger, Margaret Hart, who remained in the household for over twenty years.

I read it twice.

Then I handed it back.

"She didn't take her in for money."

He picked up his pen.

"What would you say was the reason?"

I thought of my mother's accounts, the Friday wage envelopes, the cigarettes smoked outside, the radio on the kitchen shelf.

"I don't know."

Peter came down that weekend.

He was seventy-four, a widower with bad knees and a habit of making pronouncements about things he had only just heard.

We had lunch at my house.

I showed him the photographs.

He recognised the women at the railway office, though he could not remember their names.

When I mentioned the museum's description of Miss Hart, he shrugged.

"Well, she was a lodger."

"She wasn't."

"She lived in the spare room."

"For twenty-two years."

"So?"

"Don't you think that's strange?"

"What's strange about it?"

I showed him the garden photograph.

He looked at it.

"There's Mum."

"Yes."

"And Margaret."

"Yes."

"What am I supposed to see?"

I became impatient.

"Don't you ever wonder why she stayed?"

"She was happy there."

"Exactly."

He put the photograph down.

"You're trying to make something out of nothing."

"Am I?"

"People lived together. It was cheaper."

"She could have afforded somewhere else."

"Perhaps she didn't want somewhere else."

"That's what I'm saying."

He sighed.

Peter had always disliked conversations that required him to reconsider the past.

"Look," he said. "Mum was a widow, more or less. Margaret needed a room. They got on. What's the mystery?"

I said nothing.

He helped himself to another slice of bread.

"Anyway, she left after Mum died."

"No, she didn't. She stayed nearly two years."

"Did she?"

"Yes."

He frowned.

"I'd forgotten that."

I hadn't.

After my mother's death, Miss Hart stayed in the house.

At first this seemed natural. Then it became inconvenient.

The council wanted a named tenant. Peter wanted to settle the estate. I was expecting my first child and had very little patience for administrative complications.

Miss Hart paid the bills and kept the rooms clean.

Sometimes I visited.

She would offer tea, ask after my health, and tell me about someone at the railway office.

She never mentioned my mother unless I did.

One afternoon I found her in the bedroom, sorting through a drawer of my mother's clothes.

There were three piles on the bed.

"What are you doing?"

"Clearing things out."

"Why?"

"They've been here a long time."

I picked up a green cardigan.

My mother had worn it every winter for as long as I could remember.

"I'd like this."

"Of course."

Miss Hart continued folding.

There was a small wooden box on the dressing table.

I recognised it as my mother's jewellery box.

"What's in there?"

"Nothing much."

I opened it.

Inside were two rings, a brooch, several buttons, and a folded piece of paper.

One ring was my mother's wedding band.

The other was a narrow silver ring I had seen Miss Hart wear occasionally.

I unfolded the paper.

It was a receipt from a jeweller dated March 1954.

Two silver rings. Six shillings each.

"Why is this here?"

Miss Hart looked over.

"Oh. I'd forgotten about those."

"Did you buy them?"

"Yes."

"Both?"

"Yes."

I put down the receipt.

"Why?"

She sat on the edge of the bed.

For a moment I thought she was going to tell me something.

Instead she said, "Your mother liked silver."

I was annoyed by the answer.

It seemed deliberately stupid.

I closed the box.

"Well, I suppose you can keep that one."

She looked at the ring I indicated.

"Thank you."

I took the cardigan home.

Years later, when I thought of that afternoon, I could never remember whether Miss Hart had been crying.

I remember the clothes, the receipt, the pale square on the wallpaper where my mother's photograph had hung.

But not her face.

I visited the museum again in November.

The new panels were being installed.

Daniel had added more details about the railway, the local mills, and the price of bread in 1952.

There was a paragraph about my mother.

Another about Peter and me.

Miss Hart appeared in a single sentence.

The household was joined in 1951 by Margaret Hart, a railway employee who rented the spare bedroom.

I went to Daniel's office.

He was pleased to see me.

"I was going to telephone you. We've nearly finished."

"I read the panel."

"Good. What do you think?"

"You're wrong about Margaret."

His smile faded.

"In what respect?"

"She didn't rent the room."

He leaned back in his chair.

"We've discussed this."

"Yes."

"And I explained that the wording reflects the information available."

"But you have me."

"Of course."

"I lived there."

"And your memories have been tremendously helpful."

"But you won't believe me."

He was silent for a moment.

"I do believe you, Mrs Bennett. But we're making a historical claim. We have to be careful."

I looked at the shelves behind him, the books arranged by subject, the neat folders labelled with dates.

"What would you need?"

He considered.

"A letter, perhaps. A diary. Some documentary evidence about the nature of the relationship."

"And if there isn't any?"

"Then we can describe what we know."

I stood.

He stood too.

"I'm sorry if this is disappointing."

I said it wasn't.

It was a perfectly reasonable answer.

That was what made it so difficult.

Miss Hart died in 1996.

I did not attend her funeral.

I had moved to another county by then, and my youngest daughter was preparing for university. There were fees to pay, forms to complete, furniture to buy.

I received a letter from a solicitor informing me that Miss Hart had left me a small sum of money.

Two hundred pounds.

Peter received the same.

I remember feeling faintly insulted.

Not by the amount, but by the presumption that I should accept anything from her.

I had not seen her for years.

I cashed the cheque.

That winter I began going through the boxes in my attic.

There were old Christmas decorations, children's clothes, tax returns, and two battered suitcases containing things I had brought from Bell Street.

I found my mother's prayer book.

Her ration book.

A photograph of Peter dressed as a cowboy.

A bundle of letters from my father, written after his departure. Most contained promises to send money. None had been answered.

At the bottom of the second suitcase was a brown envelope addressed in Miss Hart's handwriting.

FOR EILEEN, IF SHE WANTS THEM.

Inside were eleven photographs, several receipts, and a letter.

The photographs were ordinary.

My mother planting beans.

Peter standing beside a bicycle.

Me, aged fourteen, squinting into the sun.

Miss Hart in the garden with a cat I had forgotten we owned.

There was one of my mother asleep in an armchair, her mouth slightly open.

I disliked it at first.

It seemed disrespectful.

Then I realised someone had taken the photograph because they wanted to remember her asleep.

The receipts were from shops: groceries, a radio repair, a winter coat, two tickets to a theatre in Birmingham.

The letter was dated six months after my mother's death.

It began:

Dear Eileen,

I have been thinking about what to do with your mother's things. There are a few I would like to keep, if you and Peter agree. I do not want you to feel that I have taken anything which belongs to you.

There is a photograph of Rose in the garden which I would particularly like. Also the little silver ring. Neither has any value.

I have put the rest aside for when you visit.

Yours,

Margaret

I read it several times.

It was an extraordinarily careful letter.

There was no mention of love.

No declaration.

Nothing that would have satisfied Daniel Price.

I sat on the attic floor until the light failed.

Then I took the envelope downstairs.

The following morning I telephoned Peter.

"Do you remember Margaret's ring?"

"What ring?"

"The silver one."

"No."

"She bought one for herself and one for Mum."

"Did she?"

"Yes."

He was quiet.

Then he said, "Well."

I waited.

"Do you think they were—"

He stopped.

"Yes," I said.

"Oh."

There was a long silence.

Then Peter laughed.

Not loudly.

Just a short, disbelieving sound.

"Good God."

I thought he might say something cruel.

Instead he asked, "Do you think Mum was happy?"

I looked at the photographs spread across my table.

"I think she was."

"Well," he said again.

He cleared his throat.

"That's something, isn't it?"

I went to the museum in January.

Daniel was in his office.

I brought the photographs, the letter, and the receipt for the rings.

He examined everything carefully.

When he had finished, he took off his glasses.

"This is extraordinary."

"Is it?"

"Well, yes. It changes our understanding of the household considerably."

I disliked the expression, though I understood what he meant.

He asked permission to scan the documents.

I agreed.

He asked whether I would consent to a revised exhibition panel.

I said I would.

Then he asked how I thought Miss Hart should be described.

I had rehearsed the answer on the train.

I had imagined saying partner, and companion, and the woman my mother loved.

All these things seemed possible.

None seemed sufficient.

"Her name was Margaret," I said.

He looked at me.

"Yes."

"She lived there. She helped raise us. She paid for the radio, and my school shoes, and the coal when we couldn't afford it. When Mum was ill, she looked after her. When Mum died, Margaret washed her and dressed her and arranged the funeral."

He was taking notes.

"She lived with us for twenty-two years," I continued. "And after Mum died, I treated her like someone who had overstayed her welcome."

He stopped writing.

I looked at the documents between us.

"I don't know what you should call her."

Daniel was quiet.

Then he said, "We could simply say that she and Rose shared a life."

I thought about that.

"Yes," I said.

"I think that would be accurate."

The revised exhibition opened in March.

There was no ceremony. The museum simply replaced the old panels and sent me a letter of thanks.

I went on a Saturday afternoon.

The house was busy.

A father was explaining the coal stove to his daughter. Two elderly women were arguing about whether people had owned refrigerators in 1952.

In the kitchen, the table had been turned to face the window.

The apron was gone.

There were four cups.

I read the new panel.

ROSE BENNETT AND MARGARET HART

Margaret Hart came to live at Number Twelve in 1951. She and Rose Bennett shared a household for twenty-two years, raising Rose's two children and managing the family's finances together. Family photographs and correspondence suggest a close partnership that continued until Rose's death in 1973.

Below the text was the photograph of my mother standing beside the washing line.

Margaret sat on the step.

I looked at them for a long time.

Then I went upstairs.

The small bedroom had been rearranged. Where Margaret's narrow bed had stood, there was now a display case containing copies of the letters and the receipt for the rings.

I read the letter again.

Neither has any value.

I heard footsteps on the stairs.

A little girl appeared, followed by her mother.

The girl looked at the bedroom.

"Who slept here?"

Her mother read the panel.

"A lady called Margaret."

"Was she the children's auntie?"

"No, darling."

"Was she their grandmother?"

"No."

The girl thought about this.

"Then why did she live here?"

Her mother bent closer to the panel.

I waited to hear what she would say.

But the girl had already moved on.

She was looking at the bed.

"That's very small," she said.

"People had smaller beds then."

"Did they fall out?"

"Sometimes, I expect."

They went downstairs.

I remained in the room.

When I was little, Margaret had allowed me to sleep beside her whenever I was frightened.

She slept on her left side, facing the wall. If I woke in the night, I could see the curve of her back beneath the blanket.

I used to put my hand against her shoulder.

She would reach behind her without turning and pat my arm twice.

It was a habit she had.

Two pats.

I had forgotten that.

I sat down on the wooden chair beside the display case.

A museum attendant came up the stairs.

"Are you all right?"

"Yes."

She looked uncertain.

"You're not really supposed to sit on the furniture."

I stood immediately.

"Of course. I'm sorry."

She smiled.

"It's just that some of it's very old."

"I know."

I went downstairs and through the kitchen.

The four cups stood around the table.

I had told Daniel about the fourth cup, and he had put it there.

I wanted to be pleased.

Instead I found myself thinking about all the times I had sat at that table with my mother and Margaret, eating potatoes or listening to the wireless, and had never once asked why Margaret had come to live with us.

I had never asked why she stayed.

When I was six, I had accepted her presence as easily as I accepted the stove, the dresser, or the washing line.

When I was twenty-eight, I wanted her gone.

Now she occupied a glass case in a museum.

I stood beside the table until a family came in, and then I moved out of their way.

At home that evening I telephoned my daughter.

We talked about her work, the children, and the price of heating.

Then I told her about the exhibition.

She asked me to send photographs.

"I didn't take any."

"Why not?"

"I don't know."

She said we could go together another time.

I said that would be nice.

Before hanging up, she asked whether there was anything else in the boxes from Bell Street.

"Only old papers."

"You should go through them."

"I have."

"Properly, Mum."

I laughed.

"Yes, properly."

After the call, I took out the envelope.

I laid the photographs across the table.

For the first time I noticed that in nearly every picture of my mother, Margaret had been standing behind the camera.

There were twelve photographs of Rose.

Three of Peter.

Seven of me.

Only one of Margaret.

I looked at that one for some time.

She was standing in the garden, wearing her green coat, holding the cat against her chest. The photograph was poorly taken. Half her head was cut off.

I turned it over.

In my mother's handwriting were four words.

Margaret, before the pictures.

I had no idea what they meant.

Perhaps they were taken before some other photographs. Perhaps my mother had been trying to remember when she bought the camera.

I put it aside.

Then I took it up again.

There was no one left to ask.

I found a small frame in the drawer of the sideboard, removed the photograph of my children at the seaside, and put Margaret in its place.

The picture was too small for the frame.

I folded a piece of paper behind it to hold it steady.

Then I set it on the mantelpiece.

For several minutes I tried to remember the last time I had seen her.

Not the funeral.

Not the letter.

Margaret herself.

I could remember her sitting at the kitchen table, a cigarette between her fingers, asking whether I wanted more tea.

I could remember telling her that she ought to find somewhere else to live.

I could remember her folding her hands and saying she understood.

What I could not remember was whether I had ever kissed her goodbye.

I looked at the photograph again.

Then I went to the kitchen, put the kettle on, and took down two cups.

I filled one.

The other I left beside it.

When the kettle had cooled, I emptied both into the sink.

I washed them, dried them, and put them away.