Ethel was flinging herself into her role when the door opened and Murphy came in, dragging the morning newspaper limply behind her. The paper was no longer in very good condition since Murphy had a habit of clipping whatever news items interested her and pasting them in a scrapbook.
Ethel took one look at the mutilated paper. “Willett hasn’t seen it. He’ll be furious.”
“I was merely trying, milady, to prevent a repetition of last night,” Murphy said sternly. With her short, bristling, black hair and her small, upturned nose, she reminded Ethel of an aggressive terrier.
“I had to wrap the garbage in something, didn’t I?”
“Since you yourself have brought the subject up, milady, I suggest you install a garbage disposal unit. The cost is minimal, say about two hundred dollars.”
“I don’t think it will sound very minimal to Willett.”
“I hesitate to say this, milady, but Mr. Goodfield appears to be living in the past when domestics were treated like slaves. He has failed to develop a social and economic conscience.”
Ethel sighed. It wasn’t the only thing Willett had failed to develop.
After the interruption Ethel found it difficult to get back into her role, but she did her best. Walking out the back door and across the lawn, her mouth moved in rehearsaclass="underline" Mr. Dalloway, what do you mean by lurking around our lathhouse?
Whatever Mr. Dalloway meant, Ethel was not destined to learn. The lathhouse was empty except for flats of seedlings on the cement floor, and cuttings of pelargoniums and carnations rooting in pots on the long wooden table, and Ortega’s gardening tools, sharpened and glistening with oil, neatly placed in a corner.
Her first thought was that the strain of the situation had affected Willett’s mind and that he had imagined the whole thing. Then she noticed, beside the bamboo rake, the final inch of a cigar smoldering. She was quite sure that Ortega didn’t smoke cigars, since she’d frequently seen him working in the yard with a cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth.
She called out sharply, “Ortega!”
Almost instantly he appeared from around the corner of the garage. Ethel gave a little gasp of surprise at the abruptness of his appearance. She had not expected so quick a response, and what was even more disturbing was the fact that this was her first direct contact with him. Up to this point Ortega had been just a vague figure moving behind the power mower or snipping endlessly at the eugenia hedge with a cigarette dangling from his mouth.
She realized now with an odd feeling of excitement which she couldn’t or wouldn’t identify, that Ortega was a good-looking young man. He was not wearing his ordinary working clothes; instead of levis he wore grey flannel slacks, and instead of a T-shirt a gaudy Hawaiian-print blouse of blue and red. Pointed brown oxfords polished like brass took the place of his heavy work boots.
“You want something, ma’am?” He approached her slowly, his dark bold eyes studying her with an expression of alert suspicion.
“I... yes, I thought I saw Mr. Dalloway out here.”
“He was here. He left.”
“What did he want?”
“Golly, I don’t know,” Ortega said with a sudden, ingenuous grin. “He asked questions but I told him I didn’t know nothing — anything.”
“Questions about what?”
“He wanted to know most how come the dead lady wasn’t found before I found her. He wanted to know, didn’t you people ever use the patio and wasn’t there milk delivered to the back door and didn’t you have to pass the lily pond to get to the garage, lots of questions.”
“He’s very nosy.”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Did he offer you money?”
“Oh golly, no.” Ortega shook his head in vigorous denial.
Ethel was not convinced. She was, in her way, a rather shrewd judge of character, and the first time she’d seen Dalloway at Rose’s funeral, she had taken him for a man who was accustomed to buying his way into and out of places and people. She did not despise the type, she merely liked to label it accurately as she labeled the food packages she stored in the deep freeze, and the jams and jellies in the fruit cellar: quince, raspberry, Dalloway, and, on the bottom shelf in the darkest corner, Willett. Unlike Dalloway, Willett would never buy things; he waited until they were bought for him and then complained about the price.
Thinking of Willett had its customary effect on Ethel. She said, quite crossly, “You’re not supposed to be working here today, are you?”
“I’m not working.”
“What are you doing then?”
Ortega reached down and brushed a speck of dust off his right shoe before he replied. “I’m waiting for someone. If it’s all right with you, ma’am.”
“There are thousands of other places to wait, surely.”
“Yes, ma’am.” His tone was docile enough but his jaw was set and his eyes looked resentful. “Only this is where I’m supposed to wait.”
“Supposed to?”
“I have a date.”
“My goodness, I hate to be unreasonable but our garden seems to be used by everybody but us and for the oddest things. I don’t—” Ethel stopped abruptly in the middle of the sentence. “Did you say a date?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Who with?”
Ortega examined the tips of his shoes again. “She said not to tell. She said Mr. Goodfield is full of prejudice.”
There was no doubt now who Ortega’s date was. “My God,” Ethel said with feeling. “You mean Murphy.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
It was incredible — Murphy with her flighty airs and crisp contemptuous tongue, dating a part-time gardener several years her junior. It couldn’t be true and yet Ethel knew that it was, and after the initial shock she realized that the affair was not so unreasonable or strange as she’d thought. To Ortega, Murphy must represent class, the kind of educated and genteel-acting woman he had never dared aspire to; and Murphy, with her peculiar egocentricity, would respond to any man who appreciated her half as much as she appreciated herself.
Yes, it was easy enough to imagine Murphy’s attraction to Ortega and her deliberate flaunting of the conventions by meeting him publicly. Murphy did as she pleased, outside as well as inside the house.
“I didn’t mean to tell,” Ortega said with an uneasy glance toward the house. “She’ll be mad. She’s got a temper, by golly.”
This was news to Ethel who couldn’t believe that Murphy would let anyone or anything disturb her to the point of losing her temper.
“Really,” Ethel said quite coldly. “Well, that’s your problem. My problem is to get a little peace and quiet around here. I suggest that in the future you and Murphy meet somewhere else.”
Ortega shrugged. “That suits me, ma’am. Only Ada said for me to wait here for her today, so I’ll just wait here if it’s all the same to you.”
It wasn’t all the same to Ethel but it seemed both undignified and futile to argue about it. Murphy had given Ortega his orders, and like a good soldier Ortega intended to obey them, stand or fall.
Ethel returned to the house vaguely disturbed by the encounter and wishing she had someone to confide in. If she told Willett, his reaction would undoubtedly be to fire Murphy, and Ethel had a number of reasons for not wanting this to happen. For one thing Ethel often felt so confused and amorphous inside that she had come to depend on Murphy’s hard-boiled detachment. For another, Murphy served both as an ally against Willett and as a buffer against the old lady, taking quite a few of the slings and arrows that would otherwise have been aimed at Ethel herself.
Ethel spent most of the afternoon in Mrs. Goodfield’s bedroom playing gin rummy. It was nearly six o’clock when she went down to the kitchen to start preparing supper, feeling rather relieved that Murphy was absent and the meal could be quite simple.