Three Pretty Widows

by Barbara Else

  Furthermore, she has a guilty conscience. It’s not as easy to dismiss Craig as she’d hoped. There’s already been a note from him, apologising again but still asking for a photo shoot. She won’t reply.

  Another furthermore: there has been no contact from Anna since Ruth told her about Barnaby. Of all Anna’s ways to make Ruth aware she is a rotten mother, being absent works particularly well.

  Ruth glances out the kitchen window and sees Walsh arriving in a taxi from the airport just as she has discovered the fridge contains only two eggs, half a loaf of stale bread and a jar with a scraping of mustard. There is a liquefied cucumber. This strikes her as far worse than the adultery — a hilarious thought she knows it is impossible to share. She also realises she has missed the deadline for her column this week. And has not begun work on the two she’ll need while she’s away.

  Life has its little moments.

  Walsh looks grey around the gills as he always does after a flight, even a three-hour hop from Sydney. But it hasn’t been Sydney this time. Where has it been? A good wife should remember.

  As Walsh pays the driver, opens the gate and wheels his suitcase up the path, one shoulder held higher than the other, Ruth stares at the two cold lumps of pumpkin and scavenges through the hasty pudding that she used to call a brain. He has been in the Pacific — something to do with the reciprocal nicey-nice noises small countries make to each other at regular intervals and call defence agreements. It keeps Walsh in a job he doesn’t enjoy at all, and keeps a government department pushing documents around. It keeps exasperated pedants writing letters to the editors of papers. Now and then Ruth tries to get a knife thrust into her column about how the government spends its money but it’s tricky when she’s meant to write about manners, style, ephemera. She doesn’t see much difference, but Ms Nausea — and the advertisers — do.

  By the clunk and bang she knows Walsh has propped his case beside the hall table. In this hot summer, the smell of his used clothes will fill the house by morning. Who cares? Not Ruth. She likes it.

  How will they talk about Barnaby? When will they mention him?

  Walsh comes through to the kitchen, taking off his tie.

  ‘Did you wear that all the way home?’ Ruth turns away until another twinge of shame about Craig subsides, and opens the pantry. If she were in a story, a kind elf might have filled it with magical supplies. There’s a packet of rice crackers, a handful of seashell pasta, two cans of soup, and Ivan’s last, unopened can of Sardines in Salmon Jelly. ‘You should dress comfortably for travelling. Give yourself a break.’

  But you never know if there’ll be reporters at the airport, and given that Ruth is a style guide, or so the wider public think, and people see Ruth and Walsh as a power couple, perhaps you couldn’t be too careful. Tall poppies. Asking to be cut down, or so the myth has it. If anyone asks Ruth, she says the tall poppy syndrome is a mirage in the minds of those who think they are the tall poppies, while they are in fact etiolated roadside weeds. Life is a highway strewn with unwanted plants. Ruth would like some space of time when she could be a lily in a rut, toiling not, and spinning neither. Walsh would rather go rural and keep pigs.

  He hangs his jacket on the back of a kitchen chair before he puts his arms round Ruth and rests his head against hers. ‘Oh dear,’ he sighs. ‘Oh dear.’

  ‘Get off,’ Ruth says. ‘You’re sweaty.’ As he lets go, guilt makes her grab him for a longer hug. ‘Was it awful?’

  ‘As usual.’ Walsh fills a glass at the sink and drinks, gulping like a dog.

  ‘I can’t remember where you were,’ says Ruth. ‘You left an itinerary and I lost it.’

  He looks puzzled, reaches for his jacket and presses his hand to the pocket with his passport in, as if the information will seep through.

  ‘Tonga.’

  The jacket slips to the floor. He bends to pick it up, lets out an oof and his hand flies to the small of his back. The coat falls again in a crumple.

  Ruth grabs a tea towel and helps him to the living room. He lies stomach down on the floor, forehead on the folded towel, arms straight by his sides while she goes to pour two whiskies.

  ‘I knew that would happen, as soon as I saw you get out of the cab,’ she says as she comes through again. ‘You didn’t use a lumbar cushion in the plane, did you?’

  Walsh sighs again. ‘I did. I’m too frightened of you not to. But I got your message, of course. I saw the paper, too, in the Koru Lounge in Auckland. It had a piece about him.’

  And that would be enough to do his back in. Walsh looks as strong as a prize bull (all right, a prize bull that is out of condition) but his spine is like a butterfly’s. He tries to roll over. Ruth pushes him down again.

  ‘Jacket,’ mumbles Walsh.

  ‘Damn your jacket.’ Ruth sits his whisky on the carpet out of his reach. ‘You’re not in the Navy any more, you don’t have to fuss about creases.’

  He lies with his head to the side, eyes closed. ‘We have a lot to do,’ he mumbles. ‘We’ve been putting things off, rather.’

  ‘We could call it “cleverly avoiding” if you like.’

  Walsh frowns, eyes still closed. ‘Barnaby. Bloody old ham,’ he says at last.

  ‘As bad as his mother,’ says Ruth. ‘As bad as she is now, that is. Poor Charlotte. She used to be the model archdeacon’s wife. God, that was scary.’

  ‘Shit.’ Walsh rolls on to his back. This time Ruth lets him. ‘That’s right, his mother — Charlotte will be at the funeral. I’ll have to say something to her. What the devil do you say to the mother of the deceased? Or to his sister? Lydia will be in charge, I suppose.’

  Ruth squeezes his shoulder gently. He grips her hand and, after a moment, presses it hard to his lips.

  ‘We notice,’ she says at last, ‘that his family hasn’t asked you to speak a word or two, or help to carry …’ The coffin.

  ‘I’d probably drop it,’ says Walsh.

  ‘What larks.’ Ruth props cushions under his shoulders and back, and finally lets him have the whisky. Grief must be fed, and must also be given some liquid. ‘There’s no food in the house.’

  Walsh begins rubbing the arm where he has the tattoo: a pair of crossed swords, some chain and rope, and a banner saying auribus teneo lupum. Holding a wolf by the ears? Walsh claims it made sense on the drunken night in Santiago when he got it. Tattoos are meant to, to the idiot who gets one. He’s been thinking of having it removed but that hurts worse than having one done in the first place. It’s more expensive, too. Walsh can’t bear pain, physical or financial, and suffers bravely only when he has to.

  ‘No food,’ he says. ‘Can of soup?’

  ‘Mushroom.’ Ruth doesn’t like admitting this. He hates it. ‘Anyway, you’ll have had one of those constipating toy-time dinners on the plane.’

  ‘I think I’ll just go to bed,’ says Walsh. ‘I can wake up and it will be another day.’

  For a catch in time they remember what is happening tomorrow.

  Ruth sits on the floor with Walsh, tucked against his side, and they watch the shadows lengthen over the roses. The moon won’t be so big tonight. It won’t be golden, either.

  After the first death, she remembers that lovely, sorrowing line, there is no other. Every death holds the others in its arms.

  chapter seven

  You can replace a husband, quick as anything. Why doesn’t Ruth tell Bella that? There’s value in old stories.

  This story’s one of Bella’s, as it happens.

  Bella’s great-grandmother was Elizabeth of Swansea, born in 1863. What a girl she was: had keen blue eyes and a wide strong mouth that implied she would take nonsense of no kind at all unless she was the instigator of it. When she was barely twenty, Elizabeth married a widower. There were always widowers around in those days. He already had a family of eight. You’d have to love a man to take on eight kids who were not yours.

  This widower was Thomas. There’s a photograph of him in a uniform with a funny round
flat hat on. Local militia? An obscure masculine club? Nobody’s bothered to find out. He had a face as round as a melon, and a very thick short neck. Elizabeth and Thomas had two sons of their own: young Tom, and little Chester who died at the age of three. When young Tom was seven, Thomas died as well. Elizabeth was a widow with a little boy of seven — as well as those previous eight children, one supposes.

  There were always widows round in those days, too. As in any age, of course.

  But Elizabeth disposed of excess grief, and remarried in a year. Harry was a beefy man with a flourishing black moustache. Elizabeth bore twin daughters. The babies lay together on a sheepskin in their cradle, hands gripped tight on their individual chests. Their dark eyes made them look as cross as wolf cubs. They died of croup, one at nine months, the other at fourteen months. Elizabeth and Harry also had a daughter, Jean, who didn’t die till she was in her eighties.

  They say Harry was a good man, in his bowler hat, black coat, a watch chain looped across his stomach. Little Tom was very fond of him, they say as well. Presumably Elizabeth too was fond of Harry, given they had those children and fifteen years of marriage. Fifteen — even if you are fond of the man, that could be long enough. Fifteen could seem a lifetime. Fifteen could seem no longer than a day.

  Harry died when little Tom had grown much bigger and was fighting in the Boer War. Elizabeth: widowed once more. Bigger Tom wangled compassionate discharge for himself and rushed home to comfort his mother. But before he got there, Elizabeth had banished grief again and married a third time. Elizabeth: what a woman. She ran a pub near the border in northern Wales. It was something of a jolt to her descendants on the far side of the world to find they had a great-grandmother who managed a pub. In Wales. And who’d had those serial husbands. She wasn’t one to drift around and mope.

  Bella’s brother and older sister, though they commandeered the silver, said Bella had to have the family papers. ‘You’re the arty one,’ they said, ‘you’ll write the family history one day.’

  Fat Chance, which would be a great name for an overweight race horse.

  On the back of a hand-written death notice in the family papers is this recipe:

  3 eggs

  1 cup whisky (+?)

  tin sweetened condensed milk

  bottle cream 1/2 pt

  good tblesp coffee (essence) dissolved in whisky

  1/2 tsp coconut essence

  Bella’s never been brave enough or foolish enough to try it. For one thing, it isn’t clear whether you dissolve the coffee (essence) in extra whisky, or in the one cup mentioned. Whatever — it sounds vile.

  Perhaps you’re meant to make it in a silver teapot, to be sipped in times of grief. It might even be a trick for cleaning silver.

  Kill or cure?

  Bella searches through her wardrobe. She has plenty of clothes still over at Barnaby’s but hasn’t bothered to collect more than a caseful. She’d gone with Ruth the day after she walked out, when she knew Barnaby was busy at the gallery, gathered a few things like the teapot and the box of family papers that she hasn’t looked in since her mother died. She’d like to toss it out but somehow hasn’t.

  Bella searches again through her wardrobe — her clothes seem blurred — trying to ignore the possibility that Barnaby and Anna had an affair, even a one-sided flirtation that existed only in Anna’s imagination. If she concentrates on that, Bella might be able to forget that Barnaby never told her he couldn’t have children. The little cradle — she’d loved making it. It’s tucked in her bedside drawer now, beside a bottle of lavender essence. How pathetic she had been, still is; what a joke with a feeble punch line.

  Down the corridor, she hears Eliot making dinner, when it’s meant to be her job. In usual relationships though, gender roles are sometimes hazy, someone has to be responsible for the food. In this unusual liaison, and since Lydia’s phone call, Bella has not been pulling her weight (fat chance) at all. Bella can’t even talk to Eliot beyond a word or two. And Eliot won’t let her cook tonight. She made a cup of tea this afternoon and put orange juice in it instead of milk. She thought it seemed a funny colour. The taste was peculiar too.

  Eliot’s being very patient. Bella longs, of course, to plummet down in burning passion, but she’s frozen in limbo instead. The state of her relationship with Eliot is worse than in a decomposing marriage. It’s just lying there, iced-up. Even a full-blown quarrel would be better, but there is no sign of ferment, no brewing argument that could escalate to a domestic Armageddon. If Barnaby had planned it, he could not have screwed her up more skilfully than by his death.

  At the other end of the house the oven door clangs, a beeper beeps, there are metallic, almost musical bangs and rattles. Something clatters to the floor. On tiny portable cookers in any corner of the world you care to name, Eliot cooks exciting one-dish meals from sachets he whisks from his travel pack. Alternatively, in any corner of the world you care to name, he discovers a hole-in-the-wall cafe and charms the locals into serving him a feast of cows’ eyes, goat cheeks (both sides, either end), embryo ducklings in their shells. Everyone has an uproarious time and Eliot awes the chef by his knowledge of native cuisine.

  However, in his own well-furnished kitchen, Eliot’s culinary cunning disappears. His beautiful hands become as useless as a pair of boxing gloves attempting a row of buttons. He can’t detect the difference between rice and chick peas, cornflour and castor sugar. If something is on his very own shelf directly in front of his nose, Eliot can’t distinguish it at all.

  Bend, Bella used to say before she took over the cooking, bend at the knees, Eliot. Or: Turn your head to the side — now, tilt your chin up and you’ll see the top shelf.

  Right now, Eliot sounds thoroughly chaotic. He’s trying a new recipe for pork with ginger, and some rice. He knows Bella may not want to eat, but feels he ought to tempt her. She will need her strength tomorrow, he has said.

  Bella sits on her narrow bed, stares at the clothes hanging in the wardrobe, and despairs. It’s what many women do, in front of wardrobes.

  A pair of black cotton trousers. Whether or not it is acceptable to wear trousers to a funeral, this pair is too casual even for an ordinary mourner. Bella does have some sort of standing as a mourner: she is not a minor one.

  Will his other wives be there? Bella think so — the bonds were fiery, strong and irresistible, and strangely never made her jealous. Maggie from Nelson, Louise from the restaurant in Auckland. There might be a special pew set aside for all three of them, like a perch in a poultry house.

  Clothes, clothes. If Bella wears trousers to the funeral, Barnaby’s mother will give her one of those mystified looks, and Lydia is sure to be incensed. Again. Which thought has some appeal. And to hell with false modesty: Bella in trousers is not as comical a sight as Lydia’s calves in her PR skirts. Bella likes Lydia’s calves: they seem endearingly like Christmas hams. Bella isn’t being bitchy as she thinks this. Lydia is horrifyingly scraggy, her black skull-cap hair intimidating, so the plump calves make her human. Bella wonders whether, if she had been Lydia’s little sister, Lydia would have become a nicer grown-up. Well — no — look at Bella’s older sister, and her brother. Slender chance.

  Black silk evening trousers? All Bella has to go with them is a sleeveless green silk top. Bella doesn’t even have a good black jacket. She did till several months ago, but Ruth’s Ivan the Awful ripped the sleeve when Bella tried to hold him. Bella can’t afford another jacket now. Eliot might buy her whatever she fancies but that is not the way she wants to organise this relationship, if relationship is what it is going to be. Up until two days ago, she supposes it was even possible she’d have ended up going back to Barnaby — out of duty, out of helplessness and guilt, out of being afraid of loving Eliot, out of bewilderment at the strange stunned state she’s been in; but before she tied herself to anyone again, whether back to Barnaby or to Eliot, she had told herself she’d make it on her own. Designing jewellery. Getting up the nerve to do more pa
inting.

  Fat, overblown chance.

  ‘So,’ says Ruth if Bella tries to explain what she feels and what she needs. ‘You still love Barnaby — don’t argue, I do know about these things — but you’re not good for each other, and everybody deeply understands you’ve had a gutsful. Nor will you let yourself love Eliot, though we all know he’s been smitten with you for years and it is now dazzlingly obvious even to Barnaby that you’re made for each other. But you live with Eliot for free, take over a spare room as your studio and sit in it doing nothing. I’m not being cruel, Bella, but you haven’t done a thing. Oh sure, you cook the dinner, do the laundry and the groceries. But you won’t let Eliot be a husband-figure in any way that matters, like buying you clothes and presents, and having him in your bed. Of course, I suppose it’s early days.’

  ‘And it’s a single bed,’ says Bella.

  ‘And none of my business,’ Ruth replies. ‘Oh, Bella. I just want all of us to be happy. You’re a worry.’

  Something else clatters in the kitchen. Eliot begins to sing from ‘Pagliacci’. His sob is larger and more resonant than Pavarotti’s, the baritone choke of a breaking heart, of jealousy and grief. It’s just another opera where the characters wear clothes in glorious colours, if that’s what the director wants, and somebody murders someone else in a fit of passion that is ego masquerading as true love and there isn’t a shred of moral judgement to be seen.

  Bella gives a yelp of pain, moral and emotional, selfjudgemental. Over to the wardrobe again. The only black dress is one Barnaby maintained made her look like a schoolgirl. He adored it.

  She paws through the rack and finds a long brown skirt of a light knitted fabric. She finds the matching tunic top and puts it on to see if it will do.

  She looks like a frightened forest creature. Lydia would love that.

  The phone rings. Eliot answers, murmurs in a certain way that promises nothing nice, and calls for Bella. She picks up her extension. Think of the devil, it’s Lydia.