Work Text:
Set in S4 after Mrs Hall has handed in her notice.
Audrey had done it, she had finally plucked up the courage to hand in her notice to Mr Farnon, her employer and dear friend. A couple of weeks had passed since the painful conversation in the kitchen; Audrey was beginning to make a list of tasks she’d like to do before she left for good in the final two weeks.
At the top of that list was to do another ‘Spring’ clean of the entire house and practice, as a goodwill gesture to hand over the house in a better state to her unknown successor than she found it in; it would be her parting gift. It was Autumn, fast approaching Winter, and she had done her customary spring clean only a few months before, but her pride made her resolve to do it once more. Perhaps, it would be a way to see every last inch of the place before she said goodbye to it as her home.
She cleaned the examination rooms first, pulled cabinets away from walls to dust behind them; she lifted all photo frames and paintings from their hanging places and dusted behind those also. Each drawer in the surgery was inspected for any deceased budgies; Audrey smiled sadly to herself as she polished the small drawer handle on the cabinet near the sink, about the time Siegfried had yanked the drawer open to find Peter the budgie laying on his deathbed, the cabinet acting as a mini morgue chamber.
Audrey moved onto the sitting room and lifted every ornament and polished every lamp base. She took all the books off the bookshelves in the reading snug corner, checking for mildew and dusting the tops of the shelves.
Next Audrey polished the frame and glass of a small photo of Evelyn and Siegfried, which she had polished 100s of times by this stage. As she placed the frame gently back to its place on the mantlepiece she sighed inwardly, wondering if Mr Farnon would ever move on and find himself another lady to cherish, to grow old with.
A tug of war between doubt and denial about her future and where she belonged played on her subconscious over the next few days whilst she worked her way methodically around Skeldale to achieve the ‘spring’ clean, alongside her daily tasks of making breakfast, lunch, dinner and mopping the floors.
Days before her scheduled departure, Audrey decided to clean Tristan’s room from top to bottom. She dusted under the bed, laundered all the linen, took his bedroom rug outside into the yard to beat it free of its collected dust and then lugged it back upstairs and rolled it out carefully in its usual place. Her attention turned to his desk in the corner of his bedroom; she polished the top, and the sides. She knelt to the floor, to polish the drawers. Pulling each drawer out she realised the runner mechanisms needed oiling. After locating the oil, she treated the drawers and placed them one by one into their place. As she put back the bottom drawer, a loose piece of paper with a sketch on it caught her eye.
Audrey picked up the sketch, which had clearly been done on the back of an old practice examination paper. It depicted the two armchairs from the sitting room, Siegfried clearly in the chair nearest to the fire, which Tristan had drawn, and the other chair - she saw with a surprise - was occupied by herself. Tristan had drawn her sitting with a cup of tea, looking sideways at Siegfried, her mouth open and head tilted back, probably mid-laughter. Siegfried was drawn sitting with a teacup in his hand plus his head tilted back against the antimacassar. Tristan had over-emphasised Siegfried’s crows’ feet at the side of his eyes, and had drawn his nose pointing straight up the ceiling, him too mid-laughter. She was wearing her floral pinny, and Siegfried had his shirt, waistcoat and sleeve garters. Jess was drawn sat loyally at Siegfried’s feet.
Audrey traced a gentle finger over the paper as she sat there, absorbing the sketched scene. It perfectly depicted one of their many cozy evenings chatting by the fire. The horrible thought that she’d be leaving this behind stabbed at her insides. Audrey breathed deeply, clenched her eyes shut to stop herself from getting upset, and then placed the sketch back in the drawer where she found it.
Next, she moved over to the large wooden wardrobe and opened it. After inspecting Tristan’s clothes for any signs of being moth-eaten, she placed his desk chair near the front and climbed onto it to run a damp duster over the top of the wardrobe. A small cardboard box was perched on top, which she lowered down and placed on the bed before climbing back up to finish the dusting.
Once down, she reached for the box, dusted the lid and sides, before accidentally dropping it to the floor. The cardboard lid had fallen off, revealing a treasure trove of notebooks. ‘Parasitology: Theory notes’ was scrawled on the cover of one, in Tristan’s chicken-scratch handwriting. ‘Pathology Year 2’ was scrawled on another.
As Audrey picked up more books off the floor it seemed like she was travelling back in time in Tristan’s life. Underneath the veterinary notebooks of his most recent educational years, were exercise books from his school days. ‘History’ was one of them, ‘English’ was another; Audrey saw Tristan had drawn a frowning face on the back cover of the latter. Whilst tutting fondly at the memory of reminding him to do his homework over the years, Audrey placed those back in the box.
A loose drawing of Siegfried appeared sandwiched between two more notebooks, not dissimilar to the ‘Angry Siegfried’ drawing he had done the other year when Siegfried was ill. She found more and more drawings of Hollywood’s leading ladies as she delved deeper into the mound of books on the floor; she organised them and placed them in the box.
Finally, there was one piece of paper left, face down on the floor. Audrey picked it up, turned it over, and sighed. Tristan had drawn a scene of a picnic; the sketch was a little less refined compared to the sitting room scene, and so she suspected it was an earlier sketch. He had drawn himself as a teenager here, sat in between Mrs Hall and his brother. It had the red tartan blanket she had bought from the local general store; he’d dated it as one of his birthdays in the corner, which Audrey calculated was the year after she had arrived at Skeldale. It had been the year Audrey had convinced Siegfried that they should do something nice for Tristan’s birthday, especially after the tough couple of years the Farnons had experienced. Tristan had drawn the birthday cake she made him, and he’d drawn the sun, and Jess snoozing on the corner on the blanket.
Audrey got up from the floor and sat on the edge of the bed and cried. It would be such a wrench to leave, seeing some of the moments of her time in Skeldale through Tristan’s eyes, through his sketches, touched her heart. It had been years since she had picnicked with Edward, her own boy, and yet since then she’d clearly had a positive motherly impact on Tristan; she weren’t just the Housekeeper. Skeldale was her home.
Audrey put the sketch back in the box and placed it back on the wardrobe. That night her dreams featured the sitting-room-laughter version of Siegfried, and dream-Audrey realised she’d have many things she would be giving up if she left. When she woke the next morning her doubts about leaving were becoming hard to ignore…
The End