Three Pretty Widows

by Barbara Else

  ‘I’ve mulled it over very thoroughly,’ says Lydia. ‘I want to reiterate, I can’t have you at the funeral for Mother’s sake. I’ve tried to be generous and large-spirited but it simply doesn’t come. If you turn up, I’ve given instruction for the ushers to suggest you sit quietly at the back. You could slip away discreetly at the end.’

  ‘Oh really?’ Bella asks.

  ‘Just think how it would look.’

  The line goes dead.

  Bella considers how it would look if she attends the funeral against Lydia’s wishes. She considers how Lydia is (and Barnaby’s mother was before the archdeacon died): a nit-picker of protocol. She considers how Barnaby was (and his mother is since the archdeacon died): a champion of chaos.

  ‘Well, bugger you, Lydia,’ says Bella.

  She drags the brown top off, finds another in a shade of brown so dark it’s nearly purple, and tries that with a scarf that has a peacock tinge. She adds antique amber drop earrings that give her eyes a reddish gleam.

  Now she looks like a frightening forest creature.

  ‘Decide what part you want to play and go for it full bore,’ is what Barnaby used to declare. That’s what he said the night he nicked the claw-foot bowl from the French diplomat’s residence. He was such a charming shit. He didn’t want to play the part of father. So Anna can take her pathetic little fantasy, pour turps all over it, strike a match and let it burn.

  Bella grins, a curve that is more of a grimace. She hangs the clothes back up and pulls on a t-shirt that used to say cheetah before it faded. Before she leaves her room she scrawls a note: I want to say I love you. In Eliot’s room she tucks the note under his pillow: his bed is king size with a big headboard, thick mattress, and a duvet patterned with starfish. One day Bella will lie on it again, very much, she hopes, in starfish attitude.

  Feeling entirely imbecilic, she snatches back the note and screws it up.

  Though the day is still too hot to eat a bite, she goes to set the table. Eliot’s brow is smudged with spice, like ashes. He looks at her as if she is a bottle of wine and he’s a thirsty connoisseur, begins to speak but stops. He glances at another note lying on the table: from the lawyer. Damn it.

  Bella uses the phone in the hall, not expecting that he’ll still be at the office. She’ll leave a message on his voice-mail: I don’t have to do as Lydia says, she’s Barnaby’s big sister, I’ve my own sibling crosses to bear. But the lawyer is there. He wants to tell her about Barnaby’s will.

  ‘Come and see me next week to clarify things. However, it is all left to you. Barnaby saw me twice in the last few months. He knew exactly what he was doing, closed every loophole. Added one clause to his will, about what he wanted to be holding in …’ the man’s voice drops, is kindly. ‘In his coffin.’

  ‘I saw it.’

  ‘Yes. Well.’ The lawyer clears his throat. ‘He named me as executor. It’s as simple as can be.’

  ‘What if I don’t want it?’ Bella asks.

  ‘Half of it is yours in any case. Marital property. It would be difficult to give that up. His family might decide to make a fuss, but they don’t have a leg to stand on. Neither of you ever mentioned a separation agreement. Next week, then? Right. It’s a difficult time. Do take care.’

  Lydia will hate this. Bella moves Eliot’s maps, plans and proposals into a neat pile and shifts it to the black leather chair, wipes the table with a dry tea towel, and uses the blue and white mats with the good silver cutlery. She stumbles a little as, in the cool of early evening, she goes to the little brick-walled garden and picks a bunch of black and blue pansies for the cut-glass vase Eliot’s mother brought out from England.

  When she goes to fill the vase, the kitchen looks as if it has been overturned by pirates. Eliot’s forehead is showing strain as well as ashes. Bella feels another burst of guilt for what she’s part of. He serves the pork and rice onto heated plates, tosses the salad and puts it all on the table. They sit down. He pours them each a glass of Sangiovese della Marche, Fontella, 1996.

  ‘I don’t know how good this will be.’ He hands her the cork. It smells of raisins, like the mixture for a fruit cake, soaking. The label on the bottle shows a pale girl, a black band around her head, cradling a hairless animal. Bella squints at it. Leonardo da Vinci. ‘La signora con l’ermillino’. The animal might be an unattractive dog. An odd variety of baby lamb. A peculiar goat?

  Eliot lifts his glass and eyes Bella. He takes her fork out of her hand, turns it round and gives it back the right way up.

  Bella’s heart shakes when she looks at him. She isn’t sure if this is love. It might be gratitude. She doesn’t understand herself at all.

  ‘I know,’ Eliot says. He’s hanging in there.

  chapter eight

  Ermillino. Jocasta knows that is the stoat. Ermine is a fancy name for it. Bella must be in a state if she can’t put that together for herself. She would in normal circumstances; and besides, the antique shop still has a stuffed ferret (cousin to the stoat) on a top shelf in one corner.

  The stoat’s a restless, quick, bloodthirsty beast. In summer it has a red-brown coat with a stomach of creamy yellow. In very cold climates the coat turns white in winter, though the tip of the tail stays black. That probably gives fair warning to its victims. The stoat’s white fur is often used as a symbol of purity but the animal’s a nasty little thing. Perhaps the signora was going to have it skinned and made into a muff.

  Purity’s a nasty little beast, as well. It can attack without a shred of warning. It can hold you by the throat and paralyse you, but it’s never stopped Jocasta, oh, no no.

  The funeral’s been delayed quite long enough. This is the height of summer, after all. Jocasta zips up her dark blue skirt and buttons her dark blue blouse. She doesn’t bother with a hat because, unless you are the actual widow of the day, a focal point of the occasion, there is no longer any call for hats. She pushes her twist of silver hair higher than usual and uses an antique marcasite clip to hold it neat. Old she is and small, but with her slim neck she is queenly. The men down at the croquet club still glance at her, which doesn’t please their wives. Jocasta knows about flirting, though: restrict it to the merest hint, a glance to heat the blood, one seethe, then back to resting temperature. Never let it break out of control, not even at seventy-six. You might expect it to be ‘especially not’ at seventy-six. But you don’t know Jocasta.

  Sensible black shoes, very neat and trim. One good thing about modern footwear is that it’s sensible but can still be courtly. Jocasta has always liked tidy footwear. She treasures her collection of small shoes, real shoes: knitted booties; soft blue felt slippers; a tiny pair of sandals; black lace-up boots, one with a metal toe-plate.

  She backs her little Mirage out of the driveway before Ruth leaves. She knows Ruth is collecting Bella. Eliot will meet them at the church, and Walsh will too. Jocasta wants to be there early to make sure she gets a seat. It will be a well-attended sad event. A seat at the back, tucked near the font, perhaps, will suit Jocasta well. Who will they have to do the eulogy? A politician is a possibility. That sometimes happens out of a misguided sense of the corpse having been a public figure, though Jocasta always feels it’s crass and tasteless. Charlotte wouldn’t be tasteless, but the archdeacon’s daughter — Lydia? — would be, she makes such an effort to be refined. A friend, to do the tribute? A lot of people might be keen to look as if they’ve been an important friend of Barnaby’s. Until recently, of course, all bets would have been on Eliot.

  Jocasta parks in a side street near the library. She’ll find out soon enough. And yes, she will, because a sifting of gloomily dressed young men and women, sweltering in the heat, moves through a crowd outside the church doors, handing out programmes — sorry, that’s orders of service. Jocasta joins the crowd and takes one. Oh dear, an expensive rice paper, as if people are expected to preserve these as works of art. She unfolds the sheet. Dear dear again: it is going to be one of those silly mixtures of traditional
and New Age.

  A frightening forest creature can still be terrified inside, especially when she’s waiting by the letterbox for Ruth’s car to come round the corner. Bella wishes Eliot could have driven her, but he had a business appointment and Ruth has kept promising she’ll stick right by her, won’t leave her side till Eliot and Walsh turn up and they can all go in together.

  ‘Sorry I’m late, I’ve wrecked our automatic garage what’s-it,’ says Ruth as Bella opens the car door and clambers in.

  ‘What if Lydia wasn’t bluffing? What if there’s a fuss?’

  ‘It will make a wonderful story.’

  Ruth doesn’t behave like defensive driver of the year. Her eyes are doing that neon thing with unshed tears, and she shouldn’t really be driving at all. At last she swerves into a marked parking place outside the church and graunches on the hand brake. A young man edges over and indicates that these places are reserved for family.

  ‘And this is the deceased’s last spouse,’ says Ruth as she slides out of the car.

  ‘Oh. Ruth.’ The young man bends down and peers in at Bella. He is one of Lydia’s sons. The boys have always looked interchangeable, so Bella, in her disconnected state, can’t guarantee at once if this is James or Jason. She could almost always tell which child was Kirsten.

  ‘Hullo, James.’ Bella hopes she is right.

  ‘Good on you,’ he mutters, winks a strained, tired wink and moves away.

  Bella eases out of the car and stands at the edge of the crowd. She starts to quiver.

  ‘Brace up,’ murmurs Ruth. ‘Lean on me if you need to. We’ll wait for the men out here.’

  Bella gives a hard short nod. She will not go inside without Ruth and Walsh on one side, and Eliot dependable on the other.

  A young woman comes up with the orders of service, offers one to Bella. Bella glances at it — at a photo of Barnaby, smiling. She slides sideways, nearly fainting.

  ‘Don’t look!’ Ruth grips her arm.

  The delicate paper is crumpled already. Bella’s shivering increases, though the sun burns down. Other mourners are mopping their foreheads. Ruth puts an arm right round her, rubs her shoulders.

  There is no sign of Barnaby’s mother, nor of Lydia. What does one do? Go inside, or wait for a family procession and then follow? Bella has been to the tippling archdeacon’s funeral, which was a very high church affair, and an aunt’s funeral a few years ago. The procedure was different each time. Her memories of her parents’ funerals have been blanked off: you cannot see some things because they are encrusted so with grief.

  People do seem to be entering the church, after clustering in sombre groups, talking in low voices. One or two nod at Bella, but she can’t recall their names. This is dreadful, they are people who’ve come to dinner at Barnaby and Bella’s house. She nearly says one woman’s name but realises in time she has mistaken her for someone else. A man waves, she gives a small wave back, but even if she had known who he was it is hardly the time to shout Hullo, long time no see, you haven’t changed a bit. Most of these people got Bella’s name wrong over dinner, anyway. They called her Belinda or Brenda. To them, she was Barnaby’s wife whose name also began with a B: that was plenty for them to remember while Barnaby poured the good wine and everybody rolled with laughter at his jokes.

  Bella no longer knows why she is here. It is worse than a bad dream, for it is real. The programme crumples further in her hand. But here is Walsh, his thinning hair bobbing through the crowd towards them. And there, thank God, striding up the street in a business suit, is Eliot as ugly as The Beast.

  Ruth clasps Bella’s arm until Eliot is right beside her. They look at each other, all four of them. Like Christians — well, heretics, perhaps — about to cope with lions.

  ‘’Ten-shun,’ says Walsh. ‘Let’s do it.’

  He holds Ruth’s hand, and she holds Bella’s, and Bella can’t prevent herself from reaching out for Eliot — at once he grips her hand in both of his. They push through the crowd, enter the wide front porch and are approached by one of the ubiquitous young persons. It is hard to tell if it is a he or she: the uniform of trousers, white shirt and close cropped hair. Very like the pair who’d been making a joyful noise unto the neighbourhood about their pizza discount cards.

  ‘Friends or family?’ the usher murmurs.

  Ruth, Walsh and Eliot glance at Bella. The shaking is through into her bones. She frees her hand from Eliot and looks directly at the usher.

  ‘Not exactly family,’ Bella says. ‘I was his wife.’

  An angel doesn’t smite her with a fiery sword for telling a half-truth but the usher suddenly seems frail. Bella puts her shoulders back and starts off down the aisle. The others tag along. The church is filling fast now, murmurings and mutterings like low-flying birds and scurrying animals, a dreadful tingling air. She reaches the front row in the central block. There are Barnaby’s mother and Lydia, both staring straight ahead. Lydia’s neck seems as scrawny as ever. Charlotte, face pulpy with grief, is wreathed in enough black scarves and shawls to deck a gypsy caravan. It would be a big mistake to go and hug her.

  Bella turns to a side pew, second from the front. They file in: Walsh, Ruth, Bella and Eliot. She feels like the filling in a sandwich, mashed. As she sits down, she sees the coffin again: closed lid, and flowers on it. There’s also a presentation bowl, a Victorian grotesque, which looks as if its base might be a nest of little silver oars. As if he’s won a sports award for being dead. Would Barnaby have asked for that? It must be Lydia’s idea.

  At least he doesn’t have the silver cradle. Bella’s heart cramps up with all the things he’s done for her, and to her, with her, and against her, all the good times and the grim, everything that means he’s been alive, been part of her life. Now look — a coffin, with some flowers and dubious silver.

  Lydia turns around. Her ferret-like black eyes — brown, in fact, but ringed with make-up — widen momentarily. Outrage and impotence chase through them. She nods and nudges Charlotte, but Barnaby’s mother continues staring straight ahead.

  ‘Cry if you want to,’ whispers Ruth. ‘We’re all here to look after you.’

  Churches always smell so dusty. Even the cleanest church seems full of dust waiting to sidle up and stifle you. This one feels like an oven on slow bake. A choir is filing in. Bella hopes they sing in tune, or Barnaby will fling the lid up and shout at them.

  She looks at the big brass candlesticks, the brass cross, the lectern, the congregation. Lydia’s children have stopped handing out the rice paper and are sitting now on Charlotte’s other side. All in their twenties, they seem calm though pale: she recalls the bratty scramble that used to visit her and Barnaby and overturn their house completely. She remembers Barnaby yelling: Those little buggers have been playing with my hats again! I’ll kill them!

  His first two wives are here, and Bella feels less trembly. The tilt of an Audrey Hepburn neck in the far group of pews is Maggie, and, next to her, is her real-estate broker husband. Maggie is nearly sixty now, still with that gamine air. She stuck it with Barnaby for five years. In the row behind Maggie is Louise, Barnaby’s second wife: her mouth turns in a sisterly contortion as she glances Bella’s way. She’s here with her new partner, Rachel. Louise is the one who’d been a fashion model before she took to running a restaurant. That marriage lasted eighteen months. Bella’s fifteen years might mean, to some, a saintly perseverance. To others it must indicate what a pushover she’d been.

  Charlotte still stares ahead and the rigidity of Lydia’s side view shows how enraged she is.

  The vicar glides in from a side door, speaks briefly to Charlotte, then mounts the steps to the lectern. He says a few sentences about why they are here — which everyone knows but you have to start a funeral somehow — and the choir rises up and starts to sing. The congregation clambers up as well, rustling its pieces of paper.

  Morning has broken. Broken is the most dreadful, most monstrous of all words.

  Walsh and El
iot sing like angels with deep chests and big cavities behind their noses. Bella can’t join in; her voice is lost again. She doesn’t need to cling to Ruth but expects to any moment.

  At the beginning of the second verse, Ruth gives a strangled mew. Her shoulders hunch, she bows forward, folds in half. Tears course down her face. Walsh puts an arm round her and helps her sit. They huddle on the pew for the entire song, Ruth rocking back and forth. Walsh too might be in tears.

  So much for them helping. Bella focuses on keeping her back straight, on not holding on to Eliot. He stands as rigid as she.

  They’re all allowed to sit, and the vicar talks about how much Barnaby will be missed. Lydia gets up and talks about how Barnaby fostered talent in everyone, how he never expected thanks for it.

  What an extraordinary parcel of complete lies wrapped in half-truths.

  Lydia talks about what a wonderful uncle he was, so welcoming to the little ones, so full of avuncular advice even when they were mature. James and Jason huddle their heads into their shoulders: they’re the ones Barnaby threatened with evisceration when he found them playing on their skateboards with his antique hunting horns.

  The choir sings ‘How Great Thou Art’. For some reason, this time the congregation isn’t allowed to join in. There’s far too much descant, and a tenor who wheezes oddly on his top notes. Bella can’t help glancing at the coffin lid.

  Ruth is still drenched in tears, no help to anyone; but thanks be her sobs are silent.

  A short man whom Barnaby regarded as one of the local art world’s most odious charlatans stands up and boasts for ten minutes about how intimately he’d known Barnaby, what an honest, thoughtful, considerate businessman and entrepreneur Barnaby had been, how the art world will be sadly off without his enthusiasm, energy and candour.

  The minister invites anyone else who cares to speak to do so. There is an embarrassing silence, some awkward shuffling of behinds on pews, before a charlatan only a little less odious to Barnaby stumbles from a pew to say his bit. He is the first of a rash of tributes. Honesty is a word that peppers every speech. Bella shakes, not with the misery she’d expected, but with increasing rage. Not one of Barnaby’s wives is mentioned. None of the effort Maggie, Louise or Bella put into Barnaby’s career is touched upon at all. Like: Maggie’s patience when Barnaby threw in his law degree to start the business. Louise and her wrestling with his accounts. Bella’s fifteen years of mending antique teaspoons — and other bits and bobs, of course. In fact, Bella did a damn good job, she’s proud of it, but the three of them may as well not have existed if you listen to these eulogies.