Three Pretty Widows

by Barbara Else

  ‘But I …’

  Three days ago, Barnaby was in a coffee shop with Ruth trying to con her into writing about the next antique fair in her column. Now he’s gone? Just like that? Barnaby. Someone should have told her at once — that’s stupid. Why should they? He was found only yesterday — she’s hearing it now, nobody would have thought to tell her sooner. God in Heaven, Eliot’s only just learned of it. And Bella!

  ‘Oh, poor Barnaby,’ Ruth whispers. ‘And Bella. How is Bella? This has to be the most appalling thing for her.’

  Eliot begins to talk again, but Ruth scarcely takes his words in. Her thoughts are a clot, a tangle, her heart plunges around in her chest.

  ‘Eliot, Eliot, you’ll have to be very strong through this for Bella’s sake …’

  ‘She wants to view him,’ Eliot says.

  ‘She what? She can’t! It is truly dreadful at the best of times and — what am I saying? There can never be a best of times for — Don’t let her!’

  ‘I’ll take her down. I must do what she wants, Ruth. I owe it to her, to both of them.’

  ‘But she can’t go to the funeral, Eliot. Oh no, of course she must. But she can’t go on her own, and you can’t possibly go with her. What on earth would people …’

  Ruth feels as if she’s been slammed against a wall. The only notion she clings to, for a moment, is that Barnaby being dead has to clear the way for Eliot and Bella at any rate. She feels a stab of guilt.

  Another image scrambles by, of thirty years ago, young Barnaby, young Walsh, young Eliot, Ruth’s lovely men, and Nicolas, Nicolas, oh God she cannot think. Waves of shock are battering her again.

  ‘Eliot — when will he be ready?’

  ‘Tomorrow afternoon,’ he says.

  Barnaby, alive three days ago, now being prepared for viewing in his coffin tomorrow afternoon. How strange life is. How strange is death. The phone clutched to her, Ruth curls on the bed like a foetus.

  ‘I have to see Bella.’

  ‘She’s lying down,’ says Eliot.

  ‘Bring her round to me tomorrow then, okay? Afterwards. She’ll need a stiff drink at the very least.’ How odd to feel like this but talk quite normally.

  ‘All right. That’s good,’ says Eliot. ‘I’d better go.’

  ‘Goodbye,’ says Ruth.

  That simple word seems alien. Goodbye, may God be with you: it’s supposed to signify a blessing but it’s only a verbal full stop.

  Ruth struggles to a sitting position. She’ll go to the funeral, of course. They all will. Let’s face it: Barnaby’s funeral? Given the situation, it will be a show not to be missed. Just in time for her column, as well: a footnote about grief. This is dreadful. Of course she won’t use it, even though Barnaby would have been the first to say a girl has to make a dollar somehow. He would have been hilarious, sardonic, atrocious; he’d have been the best of Barnaby.

  Grief. Is this grief? No. It’s still shock. Ruth catches herself in the mirror again. The glare from outside is dazzling but she sees her eyes glitter. It isn’t tears. It has to be adrenalin. What a pity it can’t be packaged.

  A little below par? Stress and bad décor conspiring against your looks today? Try this. Eyes are the window to the soul, so let’s think of something shocking. Did they tell you that beauty’s only skin deep? Depends what they mean by beauty, says the Gospel for the Moment, in the Revelations of Saint Ruth.

  Her brain spills with nonsense. There’s roaring in her ears. She hasn’t thought of Anna; Barnaby was one of Anna’s favourites — no need to think of Anna yet. She hasn’t thought of Walsh, either, how he’ll take the news. She can’t think of Walsh. She cannot think. She didn’t even ask Eliot how he was — the poor man, of course he is shattered.

  Ruth takes all her rings off except her wedding ring and the little thin one on the fourth finger of her right hand, drops them one by one in the blue and white Burleigh dish with the cat on. Rings are symbols of forever, round and round. The tiniest in the Burleigh dish has a ruby chip set in an engraved sunburst. It was Ruth’s grandmother’s ring, her first engagement ring, and dates from 1899. The fiancé’s mother thought Alice wasn’t good enough, so he broke off the engagement. So much for forever, round and round. Grandmother Alice was a stickler for social niceties when Ruth knew her. You’d expect she’d have returned the ring but Alice kept it. Good for her. It’s splendid when a woman shows a stubborn streak. Men aren’t stubborn — the way words work these days, men are either pig-headed or they’re admirably tenacious.

  Walsh is a pussy cat, a most tenacious pussy cat. Ruth loves him; she doesn’t want him to die, ever, please, not Walsh.

  If a man dies — or walks away — what is the difference to the woman left behind? At the turn of the last century, to be unmarried and a woman was a thing of shame. Ruth’s grandmother became engaged a second time. This second fiancé was into amateur theatricals but in daytime he was manager of a gas works. Deputy manager, if Ruth’s honest. There’s only Alice in the wedding photo. It shows her slender waist, slight shoulders, piled-up hair with a single flower, two soulful eyes and the beginnings of deep bitterness round the mouth. From jilted virgin to deputy gas manager’s embittered wife, and no escape.

  When she was widowed — which you might have thought was the escape — Alice was even more sour. Alice had hated little Ruth. She’d thought Ruth should never have been born. Ruth never knew why, but suspects it was because Ruth’s parents loved each other. But Ruth has got the ruby sunburst ring. It was too small for any hand but Alice’s, then Ruth’s, though even she can’t wear it now. Anna’s hand is far too big for it.

  Ruth lets the Japanese dressing gown slide off; it falls over the wicker rubbish basket. She tramples through the slew of dirty clothes and from the wardrobe chooses a dress of dark green linen held at the side by two cunning buttons. Before she puts it on, Ruth dabs her pulse points with perfume, automatically. Collar bones, cleavage, ankle. She is able to drive, of course she is, why think for a moment that she can’t? She has to deal with Ms Nausea, who won’t give a toss who’s died. Ruth doesn’t need comfort. Good God, she only has to rest her forehead in her hand for a moment: Bella.

  Poor beautiful vague Bella. Poor ugly saintly Eliot. Poor Barnaby.

  chapter two

  It’s Bella’s turn.

  Disbelief lies between her and the rest of the world like a hedge with holes stitched in it. The colours on its other side are shimmery, bright with heat. Disbelief stitches holes in the sunshine, in the hurly-burly roses at the entrance, the brick steps Bella is approaching. Beyond the door, the place looks cool — it has to be, of course, for what it is.

  Disbelief. At what has happened, what she is going to do. Disbelief that Eliot is, as Bella told him to when she knew what she must do, not saying a word and not touching her. He backs up against the short pew in the foyer and sits down slowly. A woman — the receptionist? the manager? — surely this isn’t the undertaker, not a woman? — comes out of a small office, head tipped to the side as if she’s a walking question mark.

  Since Bella has asked Eliot to be quiet, she must say something herself. She fumbles her sunglasses into her bag to give herself more time.

  The woman’s head tips and angles further. She’s monochrome beige, skirt and blouse, and her hands, clasped over her stomach, seem beige as well, just like her face and hair. ‘You’re here for …?’

  You can choose who you want to see? A pulse hammers in Bella’s throat and she swallows, alarmingly, near-laughter.

  ‘Barnaby Rivers.’ How awful to say his name, here, now.

  The woman’s expression changes, gathers up a shade more sympathy and understanding. And also curiosity. It’s clear she now assumes that Bella is the widow, a young one, too. She probably thinks Eliot is — a brother, cousin, uncle, family friend? The lawyer? The way Eliot is sitting, big face expressionless, back straight, he could be a detective.

  ‘You phoned,’ the woman murmurs, nodding. ‘He’s ready.’r />
  She glances over Bella’s red silk top, white trousers. Maybe she disapproves. Bella isn’t dressed as widows usually are. She had wondered about it. But at the moment she doesn’t have anything very smart for daytime, nothing that isn’t in the wash or at the dry cleaners. In the circumstances, too, she felt it would be an insult to Barnaby if she dressed like something off a Grecian funeral urn. Red is probably an insult too. It is a nice red, though. Carmine.

  Across the foyer is a pair of heavy double doors with stained-glass panels. The woman moves towards them. The chapel. Bella can’t look at Eliot but senses how still he is, how tense.

  In the foyer, even through the stitchery of disbelief, she is aware of the growl of traffic; but as the woman holds the door open and Bella steps through, the city sounds diminish. The door swings shut behind her.

  There, down the central aisle, is the coffin. All that’s visible from here are the toes of a pair of black shoes, hands folded in a big curve on a chest. They are Barnaby’s hands. Indisputable.

  The woman has come into the chapel with her. Why? Bella takes one step down the aisle and the woman moves alongside.

  Bella sees Barnaby’s profile against the cream silk coffin lining. Involuntarily, she gasps, stands rigid. The woman reaches out as if to hug her. Bella jerks away.

  ‘Would you like to be alone?’ The woman seems surprised.

  Bella wants to hit her. She grips her arms tightly round herself, nods, and keeps her eyes on Barnaby’s nose until she hears the woman glide away and the heavy door swing shut.

  This is it. Alone with Barnaby.

  Her mind feels split, disoriented. But this is what she’s known she had to do; it’s the only way to cope with the impossible fact that he is dead. Her coming here will probably offend his family. His sister, at any rate. Good.

  What would Barnaby have thought? It might have outraged him. But pleased him enormously as well. He would have thought it means she still loves him. Does she? No — it’s just that she must see him.

  Bella walks closer in the trembling light, wondering when she’ll stop, how near she’ll be able to approach. She finds she goes right up and her feet carry her around to the other side. Now the coffin’s between her and the doors. She looks down at him. Droopy crows’ feet curve at the corners of his eyes, and lines crease from the corners of his mouth down around his chin as if he’s a ventriloquist’s doll. His hair is streaked with white. It’s the wrathful badger look that thick black hair sometimes takes on in middle age. He doesn’t look angry, though. He also seems smaller than when she last saw him, when he was such a bastard at that dreadful family dinner. It’s odd to see him lying quiet. Over the last three months, on the phone and in his letters, he’d sounded furious — when he wasn’t being insulted, wounded or demanding. She’d expected him to grow outsized on those explosions of emotion. Only his face is plumper than it used to be — it will be packed with cotton wool.

  Bella wishes her mind wouldn’t fling such dreadful thoughts up, like unexpected stones she cannot dodge. Though his lips are sewn shut, Bella expects him to sit up suddenly and shout: I knew you’d come eventually! Don’t speak about the man you love like that! Go on, admit it! Say you love me!

  ‘Oh, Barnaby.’ Bella’s lips move soundlessly.

  He’s wearing a tuxedo. Bella remembers it being made, fourteen years ago, a shadowy little tailor’s shop in Hong Kong. On the floor in almost total gloom had sat an ancient man pulling raw silk like spider thread from balls in four small basins, winding it through a twisted thumbnail to form a thicker thread. Whisper of silk, faint rolling of the balls. ‘Last one for eighty-nine year,’ the tiny tailor muttered to her armpit. ‘Only genuine here. You with father?’ He’d peered up at her; his hand hovered like a moth beside her face. Bella had managed not to laugh. Though thoroughly affronted, Barnaby insisted on staying because a High Commissioner had his suits made there. The jacket was the extreme of elegance and still looks good on him.

  The plaid bow tie is new. Her mother’s voice echoes in the back of Bella’s mind: Never trust a man with a patterned bow tie, it’s even more suspicious than a cravat. She has to admit it is effective though. Clothes usually were, on Barnaby.

  His shoes are very shiny. Pointed toes. Those feet, aimed at the ceiling.

  Another shudder of air fills Bella’s lungs. She still cannot believe that Barnaby lies motionless, that his brown eyes will not spring open and flash that particular brand of amusement and horror, disguising how injured he is that anyone can think otherwise than he. Barnaby. It’s over, Bella wants to say, but she feels as caught by him as ever. The past, the time they’ve had together, has her stuck like a bird in lime.

  That’s a bewildering thought, given what’s going on with Eliot. She’s being too dramatic. Of course it is finished: she walked out on him. Bella’s confusion of feeling is probably because he’s lying silent. It seems so inappropriate, so wrong for a man with a chest as round as a barrel.

  Well, she’s done it. Had a look. But somehow Bella doesn’t want to leave, even if Barnaby’s sister might charge through the double doors at any moment.

  Bella and Barnaby — some of those years had been all right. Even the fights had been fun very often, the raging round the living room, hands pressed into their hair (individually, that is) like that woman in Munch’s ‘The Scream’ who is so seriously perturbed. In public, too, they’d liked to cause a stir, provided Bella did her bit quietly. Barnaby could be the life and soul but she was expected to be more of a static element. She almost hears his voice soaring to all corners of the chapel in his favourite ballad. I care for nobody, no, not I, For nobody cares for me. Although anyone who bought that sentiment from Barnaby was completely, most thoroughly, conned.

  ‘You could never stop being a child,’ Bella whispers. ‘Petty despot. Middle-aged clown.’ She can say anything she likes. She can call him any name beneath the sun and he can’t fuss. Sugar Daddy, Mr Fantasy, Old Peter Pan — but it doesn’t seem right that Bella should get angry with him now. Besides, that woman who tried to hug her might come back.

  She wants to stop looking at him: the way his hair springs off his forehead, the little twist in his left eyebrow that hides a scar, the broken nose, the motionless barrel of his chest. The backs of his hands seem bleached, cupped there, so plain and wide — They’re not flat upon his chest. Bella leans over and glimpses something silver tucked away in Barnaby’s grasp. He always said if he died before she did, she must put a photo of herself into his coffin. She said the same, of course — people say extravagant sentimental things when they are meant to be in love. He claimed once he’d had a clause about it added to his will. She’d said it didn’t suit middle-aged men to be such drama queens. He’d sulked for three full days.

  The silence, the heaviness of air begins to overcome her. Bella doesn’t think she can stay on her feet much longer, but in order to sit down she’ll have to walk back around the coffin. The front pew seems a hundred miles away. If she sits down, too, it will imply she’s staying longer. She’s really had enough. It is true, terrible and true: Barnaby is dead. She’s seen him. She must believe it now.

  But — the hint of silver against his white dress shirt. It’s wrongly shaped to be a photo in a frame. She can’t pull it out to see, of course. That would be an invasion of his privacy, like stealing. For heaven’s sake. Death itself is invasion enough, theft and crime enough.

  But there is the glimpse of silver. Bella leans further over him and sees a plain rolled edge. She straightens up.

  She hasn’t touched him yet. She ought to touch him, once, before she leaves. She owes something to him after all, to the fifteen years they’ve had together. And Bella supposes she still is — was — his wife. For the last three months he kept shouting down the phone she was. So she’s his widow. A sort of one. Widows have rights and obligations.

  Therefore, Bella, touch him.

  He will be cold, as cold as stone.

  Her hands tuck themselv
es into her armpits.

  A kiss would be going too far — besides, she can’t bring herself to do it. She ought to touch him, though. It would be the last little proof that he is dead.

  Where? His face? No, much too intimate. Barnaby hadn’t been a spiritual man (though in his way he’d always worshipped lovely things), but she can’t offend his spirit like that. Surely his hand will be all right to touch. Eliot would understand; not even Barnaby’s family would object to that, not really. A touch would be a sign of all Bella’s shared with Barnaby. It would be a sign of some respect as well.

  Respect? Barnaby? Lord love a duck: another of her mother’s pet expressions.

  A bubble of grief, hysteria and disbelief surrounds Bella again, muffles everything except this coffin, this quiet room, the empty lines of the pews where she almost imagines transparent mourners, an insubstantial audience with their hands up ready to clap.

  She is the only audience, this time.

  Her hands come away from the refuge of her armpits: one clutches the strap of her shoulder bag as if it’s a safety line, the other moves towards Barnaby’s. A whisper of a touch, first. Yes: cold. A longer touch. His hands that have been so familiar, that have played, stroked, rescued, gestured, loved: she slides a whole hand lightly over his pair, hard as marble. It’s terrible. Bella doesn’t know how she is doing this. Her eyes begin to brim.

  With her fingertips Bella touches the silver thing he holds. Her tears vanish. She knows at once that it’s the tiny silver cradle. She hauls it out. What a rotten sod he is. How dare he do this! She clutches it in both hands —

  But she didn’t mean to grab it.

  Oh help. Oh dear. What now?

  What the hell is my wife up to? All right — I’m dead. But I deserve an explanation. Can we run over the last few minutes one more time?

  Thank you.

  That’s me, lying there. Somehow, I also see Bella in the car as Eliot drives her into the parking lot. She doesn’t look too lively on it. That’s flattering, I suppose. Now the loveliest of my three wives walks past the roses and in through the funeral parlour door, Eliot stolid as a policeman at her back.