Suddenly in a kind of panic I scramble out of bed and grope to turn on the light. Blinking, shivering a little, I stand there in the middle of the room, the night and my life. I know now the name of my malaise. It is anger. But what use is that kind of knowledge?
CHAPTER THREE
“Now, Sir, dear,” I say to Prince Charles, “do please be reasonable. You must have known I couldn’t get here sooner. I had to go to his funeral, after all.”
“Then it isn’t just because of my ears?” he asks, looking at me gravely before climbing into his red helicopter. But suddenly Cuthbert steps between us, his short arms extended dramatically. He wears nothing but his thick spectacles. Below the chin his naked form is plump and dimpled, its little pink appendage as innocent as a cherub’s. Yet the moment he speaks, the Prince vanishes like a puff of smoke and in a voice of resonant authority Cuthbert says to me, “Fear no more.” In the distance a bell rings and my eyes jerk open. The telephone. It is broad daylight. With difficulty I extricate myself from the tangled bedclothes and the dream voices.
Still thick and slow with sleep, I pick up the phone on the kitchen counter. Cuthbert’s voice quacks at the other end of the line.
“I don’t want to trouble you, Rowena, but I have several things here for you to sign … No will’s come to light, I suppose. Ah, well. That wouldn’t matter, you see – under the Succession Law Reform Act, you’d be automatically entitled to seventy per cent of the estate, if only that earlier will didn’t exist.” He sighs. “Well, I can explain it all when I see you. Would it be convenient if I drop in this morning some time? Then we can go over …”
“Yes, of course, I’ll be here.”
“See you in about an hour, then.”
As I dress, I try to reconstitute that morning dream. Some detail of it seemed significant at the time, but which? Not the Prince himself, for all he stars in so many of my daytime fantasies. Our relationship, for a number of good reasons, is Platonic, but it has quite powerful sexual and emotional overtones none the less, and has provided much satisfaction over the years. The two of us have in common an over-active conscience, loneliness and a deep-rooted mistrust of our own capabilities. The novelist Ethel Wilson is another regular partner in imaginary conversations and encounters that make hours at the ironing board, for example, lively instead of tedious. She shares with me a maverick imagination, often suppressed, but more often subversively active. She is in fact the kind of writer I would be, if I were a writer. Charles inhabits the practical world; while dead but living Ethel W., with her offhand eccentricity and understated wisdom, occupies the larger realm of ideas.
Luckily no one guesses how often I am in silent communication with these two unlikely comrades. If Marion ever suspected it she would be seriously alarmed. And perhaps rightly so. But it doesn’t trouble me to know, as I have for a long time, that I am a little crazy. As long as it doesn’t show, I tell myself, it’s nobody’s business but mine. Meanwhile, Cuthbert will be here any minute; like most worriers, he is always prompt.
I hurry downstairs and put on the kettle. For obscure health reasons, he never touches caffeine, so I set out the milk to make hot chocolate for him. I’ve never seen any point in telling him that cocoa contains caffeine, too. A glance out at the weather suggests that he may, after all, be a little late. In sporadic gusts, freezing rain is sputtering down from a leaden sky. The Wrights’ black cat, Wittgenstein, ears flattened, picks his way across the icy grass of our yard with an air of disgust.
A rattle at the front door proves to be not Cuthbert but the day’s mail. Most of it consists of bills, and there are two envelopes embossed Hallmark. I add them all, unopened, to the little stack of condolences on the desk. Some time or other I will have to deal with it all; but not now. The kettle breaks into its shrill whistle, and though I long for my tea, I turn it off to wait for Cuthbert. Several times I go to the front window to part the slats of the venetian blind, but there is no sign yet of his big Buick – an assertive sort of car, I’ve often thought, for such a mild little man. The road shines with a menacing glaze of ice; quite possibly he will not drive at all in these conditions. Though he is only fifty-five, Cuthbert has all the prudent, precautionary ways of a celibate of eighty. Born an only child of elderly parents, he was buffeted by every possible childhood illness and has emerged small, frail, bespectacled, a sort of undeveloped man. He lives alone in an immaculate condo, his only companion a canary called Basil. In spite of all this, it seems Cuthbert is quite an effective lawyer, perhaps because he is so nearly comic to look at that people underestimate him. We have insignificance in common, at any rate. I like Cuthbert.
At last comes a rap at the door and in he steps, first scrupulously wiping his feet on the mat. He puts down his briefcase; then, one after the other, removes his old-fashioned galoshes.
“What a nasty day. I thought you might not make it at all.”
“Well, I nearly didn’t.” Plucking off his thick glasses, he wipes them dry on a clean handkerchief, then, for good measure, mops his face. “Somebody rear-ended me at a light. Great big bison of a fellow … He gets out of his car waving his arms and bellowing as if it’s all my fault. ‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ I said, ‘I distinctly saw you in my rear-view mirror doing twenty-five miles an hour after the light turned red.’ ” Slowly he unwinds his scarf and folds it into a neat square. Then he tucks his gloves into a coat pocket. “My, my, some people. Anyhow, I just walked over to the corner where a couple of girls were waiting to cross – they’d seen the whole thing – and I asked if they’d be witnesses in court if necessary, and they said they would. One of them was very pretty, too – a redhead – I quite looked forward to getting her name and address! But Mr. Bison folded right up at that point … handed over his insurance info as meek as a lamb, and we parted on quite civilized terms after all. Just the same, my poor bumper looks pretty sad.”
I make sympathetic noises and lead him into the kitchen where the kettle is just beginning to rumble again. “As long as you weren’t hurt at all, Cuthbert. Cocoa all right for you? Sometimes you can get whiplash trouble from a collision like that.”
He feels his neck experimentally. “No, everything seems to be all right, thanks.” While I make our drinks he sits neatly at the table, elbows close to his sides and small hands folded together. “Marion quite well?” he asks.
“Fine, thanks. And how is your mother?”
These polite questions are not unrelated. I’ve never met Cuthbert’s mother, but his references to her suggest a severely upright personality with uncomfortably high standards in everything.
“Now about these papers, Rowena – all right if I use this table here so we can …? And while I think of it, I’m going to need your marriage and birth certificates, plus Marion’s, and the deeds to this house, to document our case. I suppose Edwin kept all that kind of thing in his safety deposit box; but you’re entitled to access as long as you make a list for the bank of everything you take out of it. All you have to do is tell them who you are, and … Anyhow, you’ll go and get them soon, won’t you, because it may be smart to be ready before the – er – the others there in Ottawa get themselves organized. And of course you must keep on searching everywhere for that will. I’m absolutely sure he left some kind of statement somewhere … Look through every book in the house, for instance –”
I warm both hands around the cup of tea before taking the first voluptuous sip of it. As he draws papers out of his case and sets them out neatly between us, the memory of Cuthbert’s cupid-like nudity in my dream intrudes. I bury my nose hastily in my cup.
“Now this one,” he says, peering at one of the documents through his thick lenses, “this one is the application for dependants’ relief –” Here he breaks off, frowning, one hand flying to the side of his neck. “Dear me. That was a bit of a twinge.”
“Perhaps you got whiplash after all, Cuthbert. Or it might be just a twist in a muscle. Would you like me to give it a rub? Edwin sometimes got a sti
ff neck and I could generally loosen it up for him. If you’ll just open your collar –”
“It’s nice of you, Rowena.” Blinking shyly, he tugs loose the knot of his sober tie and unbuttons the collar of his shirt. He bends his head forward, exposing a white nape with a soft little drake’s tail of brown hair growing down it.
“Ah,” he says. “Ouch. Ah. Oh, that does feel good. Much better. How clever of you. And how kind.” His arms close around my waist in a childish hug. But then, while my hand is still on his neck, he suddenly gets to his feet, roughly disordering all the papers on the table. What he has in mind is probably a friendly peck on the cheek; but, distracted by the papers drifting to the floor, I turn my head aside and his kiss lands instead on the side of my neck. Somehow he must make contact with a nerve centre of some kind there, for the touch of his warm mouth sets off a surprising reaction in quite distant parts of my body. Burning with shock, embarrassment and dismay, I extricate myself and turn away, hoping that none of these responses are visible.
“That does feel better, thanks, Rowena,” he says fumbling to button his collar. “Very good of you.”
“Glad it helped.”
We both stoop busily to retrieve the spilled papers.
“Sorry – clumsy of me,” and, “That’s all right – they’re all here,” we say simultaneously.
With decorum we sit down, once more facing each other. “Now, as I was saying, about this application –” he begins.
Well, Charles – well, Mrs. W. – I ask silently, what do you think of that? Combine your expertise. What on earth was that all about?
“Probably,” the Prince says after a thoughtful pause, “absolutely nothing.” Mrs. W. preserves an enigmatic silence, though her smile is mischievous.
And now, looking at Cuthbert tapping papers together primly and pushing the glasses up on his short nose, I realize not without regret how right they both are. Leaning forward, I pin my attention firmly to the affidavit he is patiently explaining to me will have to be filed as part of my application for relief.
The Wrights’ casserole dish is a very handsome one of Brittany ceramic, so it will have to be promptly returned. Later in the afternoon, with Cuthbert gone and lunch cleared away, I decide that, if only as an alternative to more important chores, I will get this little task over with. I intend simply to hand it in, thank them and come away at once. With luck perhaps their young son will answer the door, so I need not socialize much, if at all.
Before my courage can ebb away I pull on my coat and step carefully down our narrow front steps and up theirs. The sky has cleared now to a milky blue, and the temperature has risen again. Trees, parked cars, rooftops and bushes all drip and stream with melting ice. As I wait for an answer to my knock, the street lamps glow to life in a row of luminous green discs.
“Ah, Mrs. Hill!” cries Pamela, flinging the door wide. “How nice to see you. Come right along in.” And before I can protest I am swept inside, dish and all. Arthur scrabbles wildly at my knees, simultaneously barking and wagging his stump. Dismayed, I find myself stripped down to my old grey cardigan and skirt and herded into the sitting-room. There I am introduced to two tall men – her husband, John, and their good-looking older son Maxwell, a Queen’s student. My coat, the dish and the dog (still barking) all vanish while I say how do you do helplessly and sit down. The boy politely turns off the TV football game, but not without a wistful final glance. A somewhat heavy silence follows. John is a stoutish, amused-looking Englishman who, when he speaks at all, sounds like a telegram. This verbal habit I am soon to understand perfectly.
“How do,” he says. “Foul weather.”
“Foul, it’s perfectly obscene,” says Pamela as she whisks back into the room. “Do give us all a drink, John. I once thought nothing could be worse than English weather, but it’s a marvel to me with the climate here frightful as it is, that every living soul in this country isn’t a hopeless alcoholic, after all think of Russia where they actually drink brake fluid or maybe that’s just propaganda, what do you think, Mrs. Hill – or may I call you by your first name?”
“Please do. It’s Rowena.”
“Drink,” says John, advancing on a silver tray crowded with bottles. “Gin? Sherry? Rye?”
“Oh, thank you, but I hardly ever –”
“Seize the hour,” he says cheerfully. “Last few days a bit rough for you. Nip of Scotch? Call it medicinal.”
“Well, just a very small one, thanks.”
Pamela has flopped into an overstuffed chintz chair, her trousered legs spread wide. She clutches her thick hair off her face like someone trying to control a runaway horse.
“Is your name from Ivanhoe then, horrible school reading, what a lot that man Scott has to answer for, the thousands he has bored to tears, and such awful sticks of women in that book, I can’t think why Victorian writers were all so terrified of sexy women – look at Dickens, and all the time he had that swarm of children and a little popsie on the side, as well – I do wonder why to a man they portray women without any legs who keep on fainting all over the place, ridiculous I call it. Ah, lovely gin, thank you, darling.”
I sip my drink cautiously. In the distance a phone rings, a child’s voice calls, “For you, Max,” and the young man darts out of the room with an apologetic smile.
“Dishy, isn’t he,” says his mother proudly. “A bit tense, these days, though, don’t you find, John? It’s that girl, of course, at twenty years old what else? – but it’s hard luck, really, because in this case she’s the only child of a pair of fanatic Mennonites. They’re living together in Kingston – the kids, I mean – but her parents have a farm nearby and they keep on dropping in to her apartment, and Max can hardly pretend to be there just to study with her all the time, can he, so he’s fixed himself up a cupboard with a chair and a lightbulb, and he darts in there and reads till they go; but you can see, can’t you, that it would not make for relaxed nerves. How glad I am not to be that young any more.”
Another modest sip of Scotch sends a wave of warmth to the ends of my toes. Somewhat to my surprise, I rather like the sensation.
“Yes, it’s the start and the finish of life that are so bothersome, don’t you think,” Pam goes on comfortably. “I clearly remember how awful it was being a child and my parents made sure it was even worse by packing me off to an English boarding school. No, being young is frightful, it’s middle age I’m finding so enjoyable. So many fewer things to bother or terrify, like pregnancy or failing exams. Not nearly so many bugbears.”
“Do you really think so?” Something about her dotty conversation is so relaxing that I almost forget to be shy. “I haven’t noticed much falling off, myself. I suppose it’s a matter of temperament.”
“How bloody right you are. Take my father, now. He was always a bit inflammable, but now he’s over eighty, absolutely everything annoys him to the point of apoplexy … AIDS, inflation, pollution, terrorism, pornography, additives in food, the greenhouse effect (which I adore), it’s hardly safe to mention anything. I don’t know. His daily comes and gets his meals, and I go over as often as I can to keep an eye on things, but after ten minutes with him I can feel my eczema simply popping out all over me like a wallpaper pattern. Even the daily can barely stand him, and she hardly understands any English. I don’t suppose you happen to know anybody, do you, preferably deaf and dumb for her own sake, who could baby-sit him evenings, just to make sure he doesn’t get lost on the way to the toilet or fall downstairs? Not that it wouldn’t be a blessing of sorts if he did, then a hospital would have to cope.”
“Well, just possibly I might be able to think of somebody,” I say warily.
The black cat Wittgenstein now comes into the room and sits with dignity on the centre medallion of the rug. His yellow eyes consider me so intently I lose momentum after this tentative opening, and fall silent again.
“Well, if ever you hear of anybody … Do top us up, John. Now tell me, what are your plans? I’d be off like a
shot to the Bahamas or San Diego, in your shoes.”
“Not for me, thanks,” I say as John reaches for my glass. “No, I have no plans, really.” This remark is, I think, even for me, a superbly bland summary of my present state of mind. The cat approaches and jumps into my lap with an air of nonchalance that suggests he doesn’t really care for laps, but might find mine tolerable.
“Oh, good; then you have time to consider all the delicious possibilities. For instance a friend of ours – and Louise is centuries older than you – she went to Florida for the first time in her life right after the funeral, and within weeks, Rowena – weeks – she not only had a glorious tan and a cup for bridge, but a new boyfriend. Well, when I say new and boy, Maurice is seventy-eight; but the thing is they are living together to this day in blissful sin in Orlando, though how they manage it I don’t really know, because she has gout in her knees, and he’s only got one leg, though perhaps one provides enough –”
Here she catches my eye and breaks into a loud guffaw. I sputter wildly into my glass. Grinning, John claps me on the back. Young Maxwell, who has slipped into the room to get himself a beer, gives us a resigned look that intimates he hopes we will all one day grow up and cease embarrassing him. We are all just as pleased when he disappears again.
“Well, you see, the fact is I will probably be very poor,” I find myself telling them.
“But, my dear, you don’t mean soup-and-blankets poor.”
“Something pretty close. My husband seems to have left everything to his first wife.” With some incredulity I hear myself sharing this information with strangers. For one thing, it seems disloyal. But, remembering how much more there is to tell, I think defiantly, Why not?
“Well, I must say I call that rather unsporting of him,” says Pam, leaning forward. She fastens on me the full beam of an attentive gaze, and it interests me to note how intelligent her eyes are, despite her random and frivolous chat. This makes me wonder whether silliness might not be as good a smokescreen as any other; or whether, on the other hand, frivolity might not after all be a form of wisdom. For a second or two she contemplates me thoughtfully. In any other circumstances I would do my best to become totally invisible, but under this scrutiny, perhaps in belated reaction to recent stress, I feel strangely, recklessly relaxed.
A Serious Widow Page 5
