Atdtda35: Don't worry about the ceiling, 967-981 #1

[Paul Nightingale]

A short chapter - with a single section - that returns the narrative to the
United States and the Oust home, now in Denver. The chapter opens with Stray
reflecting on the end of her relationship with Ewball and closes on Stray
and Mayva, currently the Oust housekeeper. The Ousts moved to Denver,
'Leadville having fallen on dismal times' (977); and Mayva tells Stray she
'[r]an into 'em all on the train when they 's movin down from Leadville
(980). So the Ousts have had to downgrade; the house is 'prosperous' and
'might as well be halfway back east, set upwind from the sparks and soot of
the trains' (980), but Mayva's presence seems to underscore their decline.
We might consider this point when she appears (introduced as '[a] woman in a
simple dress ...' etc, 979) to police the behaviour of father and son (and
cf the conflict between Webb and Kit on 105). The 'loud gunshot' (979) that
signals her introduction also describes the nature of the employer/employee
relationship (she is a 'matronly referee'), not to mention a contrast
between Mayva and '... those ladies present, who gathering their skirts and
moving cautiously ...' etc.

One infers this is Ewball's first visit to the Denver home and, therefore,
the first time he has clashed in this way, in Denver, with his father (a
view corroborated by Mr Oust's appearance 'holding a fistful of U.S. mail',
978). Nonetheless, Mayva's intervention is evidently something of a regular
occurrence: 'Stray, looking upward, noticed there were several patches of
damaged ceiling along with the one just created.' (979) The narrative gives
this information as Stray's observation at about the same time as she must
surely recognise Mayva. Down the page it is Mayva who mentions their one
previous meeting (on 358, 'by pure accident', and then 'jabbering away like
a couple of birds on a rooftop'), but there is no indication that Stray has
failed to recognise Reef's mother.

The chapter opens with Stray's 'network' (976), 'the possibility of a vast
unseen commonwealth of support'; and then goes on to describe Mayva as 'this
calm dumpling of a housekeeper' ((980) providing a different kind of
'support'. Here, the narrative offers a description of her routine (980-981)
that tempers service with her role as historian, the paragraph ending: 'The
children in her care never saw past the kind and forever bustling old gal
...' etc (981). If the 'vast unseen commonwealth of support' is invisible,
it should be set against the invisibility of domestic labour taken for
granted. Mayva appears as the model servant (Moline: 'As always ... we are
in your debt'; 'Mrs Traverse is a miracle-working saint ...' etc, 979) and
therefore as an individual. Before her introduction, Moline has bemoaned the
untrustworthiness of servants as a collective: 'Mexican refugees, you know,
it's so difficult sometimes ...' (977, followed a page later by 'one of the
girls', 978).